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UNITED STATES OF AiVlERfCA. 2^ 




THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY 



THEIR 

AGRARIAN CONDITION, SOCIAL LIFE 

AND RELIGION 



^^^d^.si^^y'^^y-- 



J 



BY 

STEPNIAK 









NEW YORK 
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 

1888 



BVf?? 



\988 






■^ PREFACE 



<4 



The deep-seated democratic feeling of the whole 
of our educated classes, which is the main-spring of 
our political rebellion, has left a well-defined im- 
pression upon modern Russian literature. Educated 
Russians, deprived of any means wherewith to help 
the people out of their present difficulties, have 
wanted at least to know all about their condition, 
and have caught wuth avidity at any information 
that men of letters w^ere able to give them. 

Hence a unique development of our literature 
upon this subject. In no other country has so large 
a number of prominent writers devoted themselves 
to bringing to light the condition, the needs, and the 
hopes of the toiling masses ; nowhere else have the 
educated classes given such an unswerving encour- 
agement to similar investigations. The statistical 
commissions, instituted by most of our eemstvos, 
have already described the actual position of many 
millions of peasant households, scattered over an area 
far surpassing in extent that of the whole of the 
German Empire, with the same precision and pro- 
fusion of detail as the reporters of the Pall Mall 



IV PREFACE, 

Gazette have devoted to the description of a few 
blocks of houses in Commercial Street at the time 
of the Trafalgar Square disturbances. A numer- 
ous body of writers, taking various points of view, 
has carefully elaborated in books and in magazine 
articles the enormous amount of rough material ac- 
cumulated in oflScial and non- official publications. 
Every branch of popular life of any importance, or 
presenting any complication, has been made a spe- 
cialty. The village commune has a complete litera- 
ture of its own. So has popular religion. We have 
talented writers, like Mrs. A. Efimenko, who have 
made for themselves a name and a literary position 
as investigators of the traditional juridical concep- 
tions of our people; or others, like Yousoflf, who is 
an authority upon the modern phase of ritualistic 
non-conformity. 

The works wliich have most stirred the public 
mind within the last twenty-five years have been 
those which have thrown some new light upon popu- 
lar life : " The Sketches of our National Economy 
after the Emancipation," by a well-known anonymous 
author; the ^'Letters from a Tillage," by Engel- 
hardt ; a book by Flerovsky, the works of Shapov, 
and the statistical essays of Professor Yansen. The 
magazine which for eighteen years of its existence 
held the foremost place among our periodicals, both 
as regards its circulation and its influence, was one 
which made the investigation of the life of the peo- 
ple its specialty. Among all the novelists and story- 



PREFACE. 



tellers of our generation there is none whoso works 
are read with such avidity as those of Gleb Uspensky 
on village life. 

The extraordinary development and variety of this 
kind of literature may well be taken as a conclusive 
proof that, apart from the great taste shown by our 
public for this class of subject, there must be some- 
thing really original and worth studying in our rural 
classes. Neither democratic tendencies nor patriot- 
ism could have withstood dulness and insipidity for 
so long a time. 

Our peasants have in fact something unusual about 
them. They have not lived upon the crumbs of in- 
tellectual food which have fallen from the tables of 
their cultured brethren. Their popular morals, their 
social aims, and their religion are all their own, and 
differ greatly from those prevailing with the upper 
classes. 

For the present generation the study of popular 
life has acquired an exceptional interest and impor- 
tance, as the manifold influences of the new times 
have wrought a general downfall of the very basis 
of rural life. Eussian peasants are passing through 
an actual crisis — economical, social, and religious — 
and the future of our country depends upon its solu- 
tion. 

In the book we now have the honor to lay before 
the English reader we have tried to show as briefly 
and as fully as possible the main features and the 
bearings of this double process of growth and decay, 



VI PREFACE. 

now to be observed within our rural classes. The 
task we set ourselves was to choose from among the 
ricli materials scattered throughout our literature for 
the last score of years, and to arrange the various 
separate pieces into one general picture. This work 
is therefore the natural supplement and completion 
of our two former books, which were devoted to the 
description of various aspects of the same crisis in 
the higher, though narrower, walks of our national 
life. 

Most of that which is described in these volumes 
refers to the bulk of the Russian peasantry ; but in 
dealing with the political views and social habits of 
our rural classes, and the changes they have under- 
gone since their emancipation, we have had the 
Great Russian peasants chiefly in view. It is they 
who have shaped Russian history in the past, and 
who will certainly play the leading part in her future. 

In conclusion, we* beg to acknowledge our obliga- 
tion to the Times^ in whose columns the chapters 
upon the Agrarian Question first appeared ; and to 
the Fortnightly Review^ which opened its pages to 
the chapters on " The Moujiks and Russian Democ- 
racy" (considerably enlarged for the present work), 
and to the first and third chapters of the section 
entitled "Paternal Government." The remaining 
matter, i.(^., three-fourths of the entire work, is now 
published for the first time. 

Stepniak. 
March, 1888. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION 1 

THE MOUJIKS AND THE RUSSIAN DExMOCRACY. . . 73 

PATERNAL GOVERNxMENT 93 

HARD TIMES , 141 

POPULAR RELIGION 208 

THE RASCOL . . . o . 236 

RATIONALISTIC DISSENT 302 

MODERN SECTARIANISM 339 

THE TRAGEDY OF RUSSIAN HISTORY 375 



THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 



CHAPTER I. 

In all European countries the agrarian question is of 
great moment, but in none does it possess the same inter- 
est and importance as in Russia. Here the agricultural 
class" constitutes eighty-two per cent, of the entire popula- 
tion — equal for European Russia, exclusive of Finland and 
Poland, to about sixty-three million souls. Ireland alone, 
with seventy-three per cent, of her population engaged in 
husbandry, approaches at some distance this figure. Russia 
is, and must undoubtedly for many years remain, a peasant 
State in the fullest acceptation of the term. With us, there- 
fore, the agrarian question is the national question, and agra- 
rian concerns are national concerns, all others being depend- 
ent on and subservient to them. The tillers of the soil — 
our moujiks — must of necessity become the chief figures in 
our social and political life. On the moujik rests the finan- 
cial, military, and political power of the State, as well as its 
interior cohesion and prosperity. The inclinations, ideals, 
and aspirations of the moujiks will also play the principal 
part in the remoulding of Russia's future. For all interested 
in politics — statesmen and administrators, writers and schol- 
ars — the moujik must be the prime object of study, observa- 
tion, and investigation, as well as of practical manipulation. 

For the same reasons the Russian moujik has always at- 
tracted the attention of observant travellers who have desired 
1 



2 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

to make known to English -speaking readers the agrarian 
conditions of this strange country, of which so much is said 
and so little known. There are few among educated for- 
eigners who have not heard of the self-governing, semi- 
republican mir and the somewhat communistic Russian sys- 
tem of land tenure, with its periodical equalizations and 
divisions. Much less attention has been given by the Euro- 
pean public to the modern phases of Russian agrarian life, 
albeit this side of the question is perhaps the most interest- 
inor and instructive. 

The Emancipation Act of February 19, 1861, enfran- 
chising and settling the economical conditions of one-half 
of our rural population, the former serfs of the nobility, 
followed in 1866 by a second Act, settling the condition 
of the other half, the former State peasants, were by far 
the most extensive experiments in the way of agrarian leg- 
islation the world has yet seen. The peculiarities of our 
traditional system of land tenure, sanctioned to a great 
extent by the Emancipation Act, imparted to this experi- 
ment an additional interest. 

That these experiments have not proved a success no com- 
petent person can now den3^ Emancipation has utterly failed 
to realize the ardent expectations of its advocates and pro- 
moters. The great benefit of the measure was purely moral. 
It has failed to improve the material condition of the former 
serfs, who on the whole are worse off than they were before 
the Emancipation. The bulk of our peasantry is in a condi- 
tion not far removed from actual starvation — a fact which 
can neither be denied nor concealed even by the official 
press. 

The frightful and continually increasing misery of the 
toiling millions of our country is the most terrible count 
in the indictment against the Russian Government, and the 
paramount cause and justification of the rebellion against 
it. It would be a gross injustice to affirm that the Govern- 



THE RUSSIAN AGRAKIAN QUESTION. ~3 

raent has directly ruined or purposely injured the peasantry. 
Whv should it act with such foolish and wanton wicked- 
ness ? We can well understand that a despotic government, 
caring only for its own selfish interests, should object to the 
commonalty being educated. But it is to the Government's 
own material advantage to have well-to-do taxpayers rather 
than the beggarly ones it has now. I admit willingly that 
the central government quite sincerely intended to benefit 
the peasants, not only morally but economically, by the 
agrarian arrangement of 1861 ; still more so by that of 
1866, which is better than its predecessor in every respect, 
the Government in the latter case not having been hampered 
by a desire to conform to the wishes of the nobility. 

Leaving out of the question the immaterial point of in- 
tentions, I am ready to go the length of acknowledging that 
it would be incorrect to maintain that to the Government's 
unintentional blunders should be ascribed the ruin which has 
overtaken the peasants. The new agrarian arrangement is 
very unsatisfactory, and the system of taxation is simply mon- 
strous. I shall presently show how far both these elements 
contributed towards reducing the peasants to their present 
condition. But still it was not the Government's direct do- 
ing. There is one consideration which clearly proves this. 
Since the Emancipation the yield from the direct taxes im- 
posed on the peasants has increased. But until 1879 their 
burdens had increased twelve per cent. only. Since that 
time they have remained stationary, and of late years there 
is even a slight decrease in the direct taxes — very slight, yet 
still a decrease. As to the impoverishment of the masses, 
measured by the reduced consumption of food and the in- 
crease in the rate of mortality, it is frightful and intense, 
and shows no sign of abatement whatever. This is proof to 
demonstration that there must be at work another corrosive 
influence more inexorable and fatal and less under control 
even than the actions of the uncontrollable bureaucracy. 



4 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

This influence lies in the new economical system, quite 
opposed to the traditions and ideals of the Russian peas- 
antry, and which has been forced on them by the Act of 
Emancipation. In these few pages I purpose to present a 
brief, yet as far as possible complete, account of the results 
of the Russian agrarian experiment, derived from the numer- 
ous and painstaking reports on the subject in which modern 
Russian literature is so rich. 

But what constitutes the basis of the traditional economic 
conceptions of our agricultural classes? The communal sys- 
tem of land tenure, the reader may suggest, is its most 
original and striking feature. On this, however, I shall not 
dwell. First, because it was affected but slightly by the 
Emancipation Act of 1861, which gave each village com- 
mune the option either of breaking up their land into pri- 
vate allotments and distributing it among independent fam- 
ilies, or keeping it as common property. Secondly, because 
the communal land tenure, though accepted by seventy-three 
per cent, of our peasantry, is only exceptional among the 
Ruthenians, who form the remainder of our rural popula- 
tion. The evil inflicted by the Emancipation Act is of a 
much wider reach and greater importance; it arises not from 
the way in which occupying owners divide their properties 
among themselves, but from the fact that they are fast be- 
ing divorced from the soil which they till. 

The Russian popular conceptions of land tenure, though 
they may seem somewhat heterodox to a Western lawyer 
or modern economist, are exactly the same as those which 
in past times prevailed among all European nations before 
they happened to fall victims to somebody's conquest. 
Russian peasants hold that land, being an article of univer- 
sal need, made by nobody, ought not to become property in 
the usual sense of the word. It naturally belongs to, or, 
more exactly, it should remain in the undisturbed posses- 
sion of those by whom, for the time being, it is cultivated. 



THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. ^ 

If the husbandman discontinues the cultivation of his hold- 
ing he has no more right over it than the fisher over the 
sea where he has fished, or the shepherd over the meadow 
where he has once pastured his flock. 

This does not, however, imply any question as to the 
right of the worker over the product of his labor. In Rus- 
sia a peasant who has improved and brought under till- 
age new land always obtains from the mir a right of un- 
disturbed possession for a number of years, varying in its 
maximum, in divers provinces, from twelve to forty years, 
but strictly conforming in each case to the amount of labor 
which had been bestowed on it by the peasant and his 
family. During this period the occupier possesses the full 
right of alienating his holding by gift or sale. But when 
the husbandman is supposed to have been fully remunera- 
ted for his work, all personal prescriptive right ceases. 

These notions cannot be called exclusively Russian ; 
they are deeply rooted throughout the Slavonic world, 
save among the few tribes who have been long subjected 
to Western influences and overdrilled by the feudal regime. 
The Turkish domination proved in this respect much more 
tolerant. The customs which prevail among the Balkan 
slavs are almost identical with those commonly accept- 
ed in Russia. Here, according to Bohishitch, the people do 
not recognize a right of property in virgin land. When 
cultivated it becomes the rightful property of its occupier, 
and remains his so long as he continues to improve it with 
the work of his own hands. A tenant who has cultivat- 
ed for ten years without interruption another man's land 
becomes ipso facto its legitimate proprietor, and ceases to 
pay rent on the ground that he has bought up by his 
ten years' payments the claims which the former landlord 
might have acquired. In Bulgaria, according to the same 
authority, the principle is pushed still further. Here sim- 
ple wage-laborers acquire th^ right of ownership over the 



6 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

land on which they have been employed without interrup- 
tion for the ten years' period, so that farmers, in order to 
avoid being expropriated, change their laborers at least once 
before the expiration of every ten years. 

In Russia, until its close alliance with Western countries 
in Peter the Great's time, the popular notions as to land 
tenure were common to all classes, the Government includ- 
ed. ** There is no country," says Prince "Wassiltchikoff, in 
concluding his careful study of the history of our agrarian 
legislation, " in which the idea of property in land was so 
vague and unsteady as it was until very recently with us, 
not only in the minds of the peasants, but also of the rep- 
resentatives and heads of the State. The right of use, of 
possession, of the occupation of land, has, on the contrary, 
been very clearly and firmly understood and determined 
from time immemorial. The very word * property,' as ap- 
plied to land, hardly existed in ancient Russia. No equiva- 
lent to this neologism is to be found in old archives, char- 
ters, or patents. On the other hand, we meet at every step 
with rights acquired by use and occupation. The land is 
recognized as being the natural possession of the husband- 
man, the fisher, or the hunter — of him who * sits upon it.' " 
In the living language of peasants of modern times there 
is no term which expresses the idea of property over the 
land in the usual sense of the word. The expression " our 
land " in the mouth of a peasant includes indiscriminately 
the whole land he occupies for the time being, the land 
which is his private property (under recent legislation), the 
land held in common by the village (which is therefore 
only in the temporary possession of each household), and 
also the land rented by the village from neighboring land- 
lords. Here we see once more the fact of working the 
land identified with rights of ownership. 

When serfdom was introduced, and one half of the ara- 
ble land, with the twenty-three millions of human beings 



THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 7 

tvho lived thereon, gradually became the property of thef 
nobility, the newly enslaved peasants found less difficulty 
in realizing the fact of their slavery than in understanding 
the law which allotted the land to those by whom it was 
not tilled. ** We are yours," they said to their masters, 
*' but the land is oursi" "Jfy vashi^ zemlia nasha^^ — this 
stereotyped, hundred-times-quoted phrase, vividly sums up 
the Russian peasant's conception of serfdom. 

When, after so many years of expectation, disappoint- 
ment, and delusive hopes, the longed-for day of emancipa- 
tion came for the down-trodden serfs, the idea of the im- 
pending enfranchisement assumed in the rural mind only 
one and the same shape through all the empire — that when 
once restored to freedom they would not be despoiled of 
that which they bad possessed as slaves — their land. The 
universal expectation, as proved by the universal disappoint- 
ment, was that the freed peasants would have all the land 
which they had previously tilled. As to the nobles, their 
former masters, the Czar would keep them, they thought, 
henceforward " on salary, as he kept his generals." This 
was the ingenuous and naive expression of a very clear and 
practical idea — that of the State buying out the landlords 
by means of a vast financial operation. This was precisely 
the measure advocated by Tchernyshevszy and the Govre- 
mennik party as the best and most convenient solution of 
the Russian agrarian problem. 

The Government, as might well be expected, was loath to 
adopt a course which seemed so hazardous and new. Fort- 
unately for itself it did not follow the opposite course, 
which would have been the signal for a tremendous popu- 
lar rising — the enfranchisement of the peasants without any 
land at all, as suggested by the reactionary anti-abolitionist 
party. The freed peasants were endowed with small par- 
cels of land carved out of the estates of their masters, 
who retained, however, the greater part of their properties. 



8 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

The idea of the Government was to keep up the system of 
great landlords while creating around them a class of resi- 
dent owners. 

This may have seemed a fair compromise, but in reality 
it was not so. In the preamble of the Emancipation Act 
the intention of the Government was clearly defined. "To 
provide the peasants," it ran, " with means to satisfy their 
needs, and enable them to meet their obligations to the 
State (payment of taxes), the peasants will receive in per- 
manent possession allotments of arable land and other ap- 
pendages, as shall be determined by the Act." Hence, a 
small proprietor, according to the Government's own defini- 
tion, is a husbandman having a piece of land on which he 
can live, however poorly, and pay his taxes — a definition 
which economists will readily accept. A peasant in this 
position is indeed a regular " small proprietor," or resident 
owner. If, however, a man possess a patch of land of a 
few square yards on which he can grow a bushel of pota- 
toes, he is a " proprietor " all the same, but only from a ju- 
ridical point of view. In the eyes of an economist he is a 
pure proletarian, amenable to the economical laws regula- 
ting the conditions of this and not the other class. 

Now to which of these two cateojories do the enfran- 
chised Russian peasants belong? Certainly not to that of 
small proprietors, in the economical sense. Neither are 
they pure proletarians. They partake of both characters, in 
what proportion we shall see further on. Let it here suf- 
fice to say that the land was so parsimoniously apportioned 
that the enfranchised peasants were utterly unable to pro- 
vide themselves with the first necessaries of life. With 
few exceptions, the bulk of our peasantry are compelled to 
look to wage-labor, mostly agricultural, on their former 
masters' estates and elsewhere, as an essential, and often 
the chief, source of their livelihood. 

Thus the Act of Emancipation did not, as its promoters 



THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. ^ 

intended, create side by side small and large land-owners 
who could live and labor and thrive independently without 
obstructing and damaging each other's work. The peasants 
were not independent of the landlords. The landlords were 
not independent of the peasants. There existed in Russia 
at the time of the Emancipation no agrarian proletariat 
whatever. The landlords could nowhere find regular wage- 
laborers by whom they might replace their enfranchised 
serfs. The cultivation of the landlords' vast estates had 
either to be entirely dropped or their serfs compelled to 
till them for hire. 

This was the new principle on which Russian rural econ- 
omy had thenceforward to be based. It was decidedly op- 
posed to our national and inveterate traditions, as I have 
just shown. It was borrowed from Western countries. I 
do not say that it was not better than serfdom. It certain- 
ly was better. Neither do I affirm that those who intro- 
duced it had the slightest suspicion of the havoc which in 
one generation it was destined to produce. I am simply 
stating a sad but undeniable fact. In social and political 
life, as well as in the domain of art and fiction, imitations 
seem always to bear the same original sin ; while reproduc- 
ing with great fidelity the drawbacks, imitators ignore and 
forget the merits of their exemplars. Thus the Capitalist 
order came to us without any of the free elements of poli- 
ty which were its outcome in the countries of its birth. 
All the advantages in the impending struggle were there- 
fore on one side. The masses were left with no means of 
defence, and the Government threw the enormous weight 
of its material and political power into the scale of wealth 
and against labor. The victory of the protected few over 
the helpless many was thenceforth assured. It was also 
complete and frightfully rapid. 

In the following chapters I propose to describe the ways 
and means whereby this victory has been gained, and the 



10 THE KUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

consequences wbich it has entailed. As yet Russia is an 
enormous, albeit a comparatively simple, economical organ- 
ism. Through the puzzling and disorderly complication 
of private economical operations we shall discover a strik- 
ing unity of cause. It is a huge economical mechanism, 
combined upon one leading principle and having one con- 
sistent end. I shall begin by describing its central organs, 
those which impart movement and life to the whole — the 
banking and credit system, circulation of money, and the 
rest. 



CHAPTER II. 

For obtaining full control of tbe resources of the coun- 
try, Russian capitalists made use of two seemingly innocent 
means — the railways and credit. The construction of the 
railways was undertaken in the first instance by the Gov- 
ernment itself. Very soon, however, the business was trans- 
ferred to private companies, which the State supplied with 
capital, since at that time no private enterprise could raise 
such enormous sums as were involved in the construction 
of the railways. Up to January, 1883, 13,500 miles of per- 
manent way had been laid in Russia proper, and the to- 
tal amount of shares issued by the various companies was 
2,210,000,000 rubles (about £22,000,000 sterling). Of 
this sum the Government supplied directly fifty-four per 
cent. — i,e,, more than half — the money being raised by 
several loans, chiefly foreign, the interest of which (four, 
four and a half, and five per qent.) is of course debited to 
the railway companies in their accounts with the State. In 
order to enable the companies to raise the remaining forty- 
six per cent, the Government guaranteed a minimum reve- 
nue, and undertook to make good out of the public funds 
any deficit that might arise. Nor is this all ; in cases of 
emergency the Government still continues to make supple- 
mentary grants to these companies, which have already been 
so generously subsidized from the national exchequer. 

With the public finances always in an unsatisfactory con- 
dition, this lavishness must needs be a grievous burden on 
the budget. In 1869 the national debt amounted to 1907.5 



12 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTEY. 

millions of rubles, of which only 10.6 per cent, fell to the 
share of the railways. In January, 1883, the national debt 
had increased to 3267 millions of rubles, of which fully 28.3 
per cent, had been contracted for the construction of rail- 
ways. Thus the railway debt increased in this period ab- 
solutely fivefold, and at three times the rate of the national 
debt itself. 

These outlays, it is true, figure in the budget as debts 
owing by the railway companies to the State — temporary 
loans which in due time will he repaid to the exchequer. 
But this is a mere fiction. The indebtedness of the rail- 
ways to the State is continually increasing in each category 
under which the advances are made — viz., direct subsidies, 
guarantees, and interest on obligations. In 1877 the de- 
ficit in the annual payment due from the railways to the 
State amounted to 450.5 millions of rubles, while those of 
all the other debtors of the State (the peasants included) 
totaled up to only 154.7 millions, the railway companies 
thus engrossing seventy-four per cent, of the famous " ar- 
rears " (nedoimki) which are the plague of our finances. In 
the following year the railway debts had increased to sev- 
enty-seven per cent, of the total arrears, and rose subse- 
quently to eighty per cent. In 1884 the total amount of 
railway debts was stated to be 886,000,000 rubles. In re- 
ality, however, it was more, because the Ministry passed a 
resolution to strike out of the list forty millions as " per- 
fectly hopeless." Thus the total of railway debts in 1884 
was about one and a half times as much as the entire reve- 
nue of the State.* 

It might appear from this that the railways are the most 
disastrous of the many ruinous Russian State enterprises, 
and that the companies are running the country towards 
the verge of bankruptcy. In reality, however, it is not so. 

* Eiissian Almanac^ 1886, p. 192. 



THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. IS 

The prospects of the railways are as bright as anything can 
be in Russia. The railways are, on the whole, very pros- 
perous. They are extending rapidly, and the profits of the 
companies are increasing both absolutely and as compared 
with former years. In the period from 1870 to 1877 each 
mile earned in gross receipts on an average fourteen per 
cent, more than in the preceding period. The expenses 
having in the same time augmented considerably, the net 
increase is not so great, being three per cent, per mile. In 
the following five years the increase of the gross receipts 
was ten per cent, for each mile. The dividends received 
by the share-holders in 1870 amounted to 32.5 millions of 
rubles; in 1877 they were 71.7 millions, an increase of 2.5. 
Nevertheless, the indebtedness of the railways to the State 
shows for the same period an increase of one hundred and 
fifty per cent. 

This seems contradictory and rather puzzling. The ex- 
planation of the riddle is, however, very simple. The vari- 
ous railway lines are not equally profitable, and the Govern- 
ment, while leaving the extra profits of the best lines to 
their respective share-holders, has to make up the deficiency 
of the remainder. 

It comes practically to this : The State, which has sup- 
plied the railway companies either directly or indirectly 
with all their funds, surrenders the profits of the enterprise 
to individual capitalists, taking for itself only the losses. 
In other words, the peasants (for as they contribute eighty- 
three per cent, of the whole budget they are the real 
paymasters) are paying a group of individual capitalists a 
tribute amounting from 1878 to 1882 to an average of 
forty-six millions of rubles a year. 

Let us now ascertain what are the normal use and func- 
tions of this net-work of railways so dearly bought by the 
peasants. The railways transport freight and passengers, and 
statistics show that in Russia both are chiefly of rural origin. 



14 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

The passengers first. We have to observe before any- 
thing else that passengers of the third class make eighty- 
three per cent, of the whole, and pay sixty-seven per cent, 
of all the receipts for fares. Thus even here, as everywhere 
else, the peasant is the main prop of the business. Why 
do our peasants travel so much ? Not, of course, for pleas- 
ure or for health, but in search of work. The traffic re- 
turns are very significant as to the extent to which the 
receipts are derived from the agricultural classes. During 
the winter months the passenger traffic is at its lowest ebb. 
In March, when field labor begins in the vast southern re- 
gion of the empire, we observe on the other hand a sud- 
den increase of 19.5 per cent. In April, when field labor 
extends to the central zones, there is a still greater increase 
— twenty-four per cent, over the previous month. In the 
following months the increase continues, though less rap- 
idly ; the workers are at their posts busy with their work. 
In August the number of passengers attains its maximum; 
the workers have done, and return after the harvest to their 
homes in a body. In September the passenger traffic drops 
suddenly to 33.74 per cent., and goes on decreasing until 
the followin<x March. 

The passenger traffic, in fact, corresponds with the cycle 
of agricultural work. It is represented by a single wave, 
having its greatest amplitude in the autumn and its lowest 
in the winter. This is an indirect but striking confirma- 
tion of Mr. Tchaslavsky's calculations that even in the out- 
door employment of our peasantry the agricultural branch 
has an overwhelming preponderance over the industrial. 

The fluctuations in the passenger traffic show that they 
are the natural corollary of the periodical migrations of the 
tillers of the soil. The month of August, when the work- 
ers are returning wholesale to their penates, leaving behind 
them the produce they have harvested, presents, as we have 
seen, the greatest amplitude of the migratory wave. The 



THE RUSSIAN AGRAKIAN QUESTIOlSr. 1# 

same wnonth gives the lowest returns for heavy freights 
carried at low speeds. Time is required for the collection 
of the produce by the hands which forward it to its des- 
tination. In September the heavy traffic returns show a 
rise of 19.46 per cent., and the rise continues in October; 
but in November there is a sudden drop of 20.5 per cent. 
What does it mean ? The hard winter has frozen the riv- 
ers, thus hindering the carriage of corn and other agricult- 
ural products to the railway-stations by wat^r, the usual 
method, the transport by horses and oxen and carriages be- 
ing too expensive. During the winter months there is little 
shipping of produce; but in March, when the rivers of 
the southern provinces are reopened to navigation, traffic 
increases 14.57 per cent. In May, when the navigation 
is open throughout Russia, the increase is 40.27 per cent., 
the same high rate being maintained in June. The pres- 
sure is then over, heavy traffic diminishes, and the diminu- 
tion goes on until the following September. Goods traffic, 
in fact, like the passenger traffic, corresponds with the cycle 
of the agricultural year, with this difEerence — that while the 
shipping of merchandise, owing to climatic conditions, is 
divided into two pulsations, the movement of passengers 
has but one. 

Now let us consider the other part of the mechanism — 
first, the all-powerful agent which sets in motion all this 
vast machinery — money. Ordinary banks were first intro- 
duced into Russia in 1864. Before that time the "Bank 
of the State" — the official bank of the Empire — was prac- 
tically the sole institution of the sort in Russia. In 1864 
its capital amounted to fifteen millions of rubles, with 262.7 
millions of private deposits. Of this sum forty-two mill- 
ions only were used for commercial purposes, by way of 
advances on mercantile paper. In 1877 the capital of all 
the banks amounted to 167.8 millions, the deposits to 
?07,5 millions of rubles. In these thirteen years bank- 



16 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

ing capital was increased more tlian elevenfold, a^d the 
deposits more than threefold (3j). At the same time the 
method of employing banking capital imderwent a thor- 
ough change. In 1864 only fifteen per cent, of the capi- 
tal was, as we have seen, employed in discounts. In 1877 
almost the whole — ninety-six per cent. — was used in this 
way. Loans and discounts for business purposes show a 
still more rapid increase. From 23.7 millions in 1864 the 
bills under discount rose to five hundred millions of rubles, 
more than twenty-one times as much. With the enormous 
increase in banking capital the rapidity of its circulation 
has moreover doubled. In 1863 the entire deposits were 
turned over about twice in a twelvemonth (1.85). Thir- 
teen years later they were turned over nearly five times in 
the same period. 

The increase of money power has been enormous, the 
progress of commerce almost febrile in its intensity. Now, 
what are its objects and character ? Banking statistics give 
a peremptory answer. Its chief object is the manipulation 
of raw agricultural produce. 

It must be observed, by way of explanation, that not- 
withstanding the great development of banking facilities^ 
the vast majority of commercial transactions are settled 
with ready money. According to the accounts of the 
Bank of the State, of all the bills discounted by the bank 
and its branches only fourteen per cent, are not liquidated 
where they are drawn. The ready money thus obtained 
is used for the payment for grain and other produce. 

Let us examine how this transfer of money varies during 
the year. The circulation of money is at its lowest ebb 
twice a year. Its active period begins about the end of 
harvest-time in July, but very slowly at first, the rise being 
only 1.06 per cent. In August it makes a sudden leap of 
19.31 per cent. In September the increase is still greater 
— 38.03 per cent. — and it remains at the same figure during 



THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 17 

October. November is marked by a decrease of 46.44 per 
cent, and at this level it remains until February. Then in 
the spring it begins to rise once more, showing in May a 
total increase of 47.8 per cent. Thus the double pulsation 
of money exactly corresponds with the fluctuations of rail- 
way traffic receipts, which, as we have seen, are at their 
highest in September and May. In the centre of our finan- 
cial system, St. Petersburg, the streaming out of money 
somewhat precedes the influx of corn. The money which 
leaves St. Petersburg accumulates for a short time in the 
provincial banks, whence it flows to the various local corn- 
markets, where the produce is stored in September and in 
May. 

The two waves which represent the yearly pulsation of 
money — the autumn wave and the spring wave — though 
quite similar as to their exterior form, differ greatly as to 
their object and significance. 

The produce sold in the spring is that of the previous 
year, which, owing to the freezing of the rivers, could not 
be moved sooner. The money remitted from the centres 
to the provinces during the spring season is used solely for 
speculative purposes. The grain passes from one buyer to 
another, and capitalists now begin to struggle among them- 
selves. 

The September circulation of money is of quite a differ- 
ent nature. It signifies that the capitalists are coming into 
direct contact with the producers. Now not only the corn 
stores but the granaries of the millions of peasants are filled 
with as much grain as they are allowed by the fates to pos- 
sess. The smallest village becomes during this season a 
little corn-market. The quantity of potential bread which 
the farmer sells or keeps for his own consumption is not 
yet settled, his need of money contending with his desire 
for food. The greater the amount of money thrown on the 
market the greater will be the victory of the capitalist over 
2 



18 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTllY. 

the producer. The capitalists, therefore, strain every nerve 
to have the best of the battle. The cash reserves of the 
banks — State as well as private — are heavily drawn upon. 
Private deposits are also utilized for the same purpose. 
The September deposits sink to 0.35 per cent, of their year- 
ly average. All the disposable capital of the Empire finds 
its way into the hands of the corn-merchants, whose agents 
traverse the country far and wide, doing their utmost to 
obtain from the peasants as much of their yearly harvest, 
and leave them as little as they can, because it is. on the 
success of these operations that depends their profit for the 
year. 

Finally, in this critical moment of the struggle between 
the purses of the merchants and the stomachs of the peas- 
ants, the State intervenes in favor of capital by making a 
new issue of paper-money. 

It must be remembered that in Russia " money," so far 
as interior markets are concerned, means exclusively paper- 
money. Silver and copper coin is used for small change 
only. Commercial transactions are carried on by " credit 
rubles," which are nominally convertible into gold and silver, 
yet in reality are not convertible at all, but only salable at 
at their effective value, which -fluctuates between sixty and 
sixty-five per cent, of their nominal value. 

The abuse of this privilege of issuing paper -money is 
one of the many causes of the miserable condition of our 
finances. But in the regular course of affairs this potent 
means of influencing the market is altogether subservient 
to the interests of the capitalists. 

Paper -money is subject during the year to a double 
process — the periodical issues and withdrawals, apart from 
the mere substitution of new for worn notes. The regular 
issues (omitting exceptional cases) begin at the end of sum- 
mer " to reinforce the branches," precisely when the money 
begins to stream rapidly from St. Petersburg to the prov- 



THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 19 

inces. The issues are increased as the demand for money 
increases on the corn-market. In July it is twenty-one per 
oent. of the whole yearly issue, in August nine per cent. ; in 
September, when the demand reaches fever heat, 56.54 per 
cent. — that is to say, more than one-half of the whole issue 
for the remainder of the year. And in the three months of 
the autumn market season the Exchequer issues eighty-six 
per cent, of the paper-money of the year, whereby is caused 
a depreciation of the credit ruble, which in this season can 
be obtained at its lowest price both in the world's money 
markets and in all Russian financial centres. But the cost 
of the operation is borne by the moujiks. The wave of 
depreciation of the paper ruble does not reach the green 
fields of Russia, the villages and hamlets where the bargain 
is struck. Here the enormous mass of paper -money ad- 
vanced by the State and the banks to the traders keeps all 
its buying power, and takes from the producers the corre- 
sponding quantity of their produce. 

The peasants receive the money. The autumn is the 
only time of the year when they have the pleasure of hold- 
ing in their hands the yellow, green, and blue painted strips 
of paper called money. But they do not keep it long — 
just long enough to dirty it. They return it faithfully in 
the form of taxes to the State, in order that it may next 
year repeat the same operation with the same results. Pa- 
per-money returns to the Exchequer, which can then pro- 
ceed to w^ithdraw it from circulation. This operation is 
effected chiefly during the winter season, the old paper- 
money being burned in a furnace in the court-yard of the 
Bank of the State, to the great consternation and excite- 
ment of the St. Petersburg roughs, who always gather round 
to stare at such a strange and incomprehensible spectacle. 

This brief and dry sketch shows clearly that the whole 
economical life of this colossal Empire — railways, banks, 
finances — so far as interior policy goes, is concerned with 



20 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

the manipulation of the agricultural produce, which, ready 
in August, is sold in September, and carried by the railways 
in the autumn and the following spring. 

It remains only to indicate the end and result of this 
comprehensive operation. Whither is all this grain con- 
veyed ? To the great foreign markets, in order to extract 
from them as much gold as they can be made to yield. 
The interior exchange has no interest for us, since produce 
and money alike remain in the country. 

The export of Russian corn since the Emancipation has 
increased with wonderful rapidity. In 1860-64 we ex- 
ported nine million quarters. In the following five years 
the export increased to ten millions, then to twenty -one 
millions, and finally, 1875-79, reached its highest point — 
an average of thirty -three millions. The following five 
years, 1880-85, exhibit a sudden stoppage to this rapid 
progress. The export is maintained at the same high 
standard of thirty-three millions a year without any further 
increase. We shall presently see the real significance of this 
ominous hitch. Still on the whole things seem to be very 
satisfactory. In a score of years the value of our corn ex- 
ports increased sevenfold, and became the leading article of 
our foreign trade, the proportion being sixty-two per cent, 
as compared with thirty-three per cent, in previous years. 
In the three triennial periods from 1870 to 1879 the taxes 
were increased — first 6.24 per cent., then 3.89, and finally 
3.69 per cent. It shows that the State, on its part, took 
care to profit by this apparent prosperity. As for the cap- 
italists, they are simply rolling in wealth. In the same 
period their profits, as shown by the sums deposited by 
them in the banks, increased thirty - three per cent., then 
thirty-eight per cent., and finally fifty per cent. It looks 
splendid ! 

The fact which puts this capitalist splendor in quite an- 
other light is that, according to official statistics, our agri- 



THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 21 

culture for the last fifteen years has been in a state of 
almost utter stagnation. There is a wide difference, of 
course, between the harvests of two consecutive years, the 
minimum (1876) being 156^ millions of quarters, the maxi- 
mum 23 If millions, or forty-two per cent. more. But if 
we divide the period 1871-1882 into three periods, the 
fluctuations are seen to be insignificant (1.80 per cent.) — 
in point of fact, nil. As, moreover, in this time the quan- 
tity of corn sown increased 2.1 per cent., it results that 
the productiveness of agriculture even slightly diminished 
(0.3 per cent.). The growth of our foreign corn trade has 
therefore been forced, to the detriment of the people. It 
has lessened the quantity of bread left for their mainte- 
nance. The population in the mean time has continually 
increased. In the absence of additional supplies of bread 
the new-comers must take what they require from the share 
of their elders. By comparing the increase of the popu- 
lation (six per cent.) with the increase of the corn export 
we find that the cereal food supply available for our peas- 
ant families has fallen off on an average fourteen per cent. 
In other words, a Russian peasant consumes one-seventh 
less bread than he did fifteen years ago. Nor is this all. 
His food, besides being diminished in quantity, has deteri- 
orated in quality. The best wheat (seventy-eight per cent, 
of the entire crop) is naturally taken for export. Prac- 
tically this means the whole, as something must needs be 
left for seed and the consumption of the well-to-do. The 
wheat flour once used by the peasants on holidays and 
for their children's food they can no longer afford. And 
now rye, their daily bread, and the oats which they require 
for their cattle, are also becoming large articles of export. 

It has fared no better with the live-stock, which form 
the peasants' working power and occasional food. From 
1864 to 1883 the export of cattle increased thirtcenfold, 
with the result that cattle have greatly diminished in num- 



22 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

ber in all the provinces of Russia proper, to the great in- 
jury both of the health of the people and the productive- 
ness of the soil. 

Thus the whole economical arrangement is doing its part 
admirably. All the parts of the colossal machine work 
into one another like the toothed wheels in clock-work. 
Its main-spring, which imparts life and activity to the whole 
concern, is money, or, to be exact, the inconvertible paper- 
money issued by the State and put into circulation by the 
banks. Paper-money has been issued by the Government 
in such enormous quantities that the credit ruble, always 
falling, lost between 1864 and 1882 twenty-nine per cent, 
of its buying power in the world's markets. Yet in the 
interior markets, especially in the villages, it has hardly 
depreciated at all. We are without statistics as to the 
prices at which corn is bought from the peasants in their 
own villages by the local or travelling agents of capitalists. 
It is doubtful whether we shall for a long time have such 
statistics, owing to the character of the transactions in ques- 
tion, concerning which I shall say something further on. 
The only figures we possess refer to the prices in the mar- 
kets whither the corn is conveyed after being bought from 
the peasants. 

Now these prices, which are obviously higher than those 
ruling in the smaller markets, show a rise, it is true, but 
only about a third of what it should be as compared with 
the depreciation of the credit ruble, which points to the 
conclusion that in the interior of Russia the average value of 
corn has undergone little, if any, change. This is the crux 
of the question. The enormous issues of paper-money have 
so augmented the buying power of capitalists as to give 
them more and more the control of agricultural produce, a 
result to which the action of the banks has largely contrib- 
uted, chiefly by stimulating the circulation of capital. In the 
fourteen years' period during which the State increased the 



THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 23 

mass of paper-money thirty-one per cent, the turnover of 
the banks increased by nearly seventy per cent. They have 
thus done twice as much for capitalists as the Exchequer 
has done, for by halving the time during which each ruble 
formerly lay dormant they have doubled its effective power. 
As the use of checks and clearing offices is rapidly extend- 
ing, this process is likely to be carried still further. The 
banks, moreover, now absorb much of the floating capital 
of the country, the greater part of which is placed at the 
disposal of corn-factors exactly at the time when they are 
doing their utmost to take from the impoverished peasant 
all the produce he can be induced to sell. 

The railway net- work, which from nine hundred and 
ninety-three miles at the time of Emancipation extended 
in the following twenty-two years to 16,155 miles (for the 
whole Empire), and is still extending at the rate of about 
eight hundred miles each year, serves to widen and extend 
this activity over new districts and provinces — the chief 
work of the railways being, as we have seen, the transport 
of agricultural products and agricultural producers. 

All is well combined, and the whole acts like a colossal 
hydraulic press, which squeezes from the peasants an ever- 
increasing part of their daily bread. In about fifteen years 
it has squeezed from them just one-seventh. From man- 
uals of political economy we learn that when the supply of 
corn is diminished to the extent of a sixth of its ordinary 
amount the value of it rises to famine rates. Russian 
peasants are, however, unable to obtain higher prices ; for 
the want of merchandise on the one hand and possession 
of money on the other are the sole factors which influence 
the markets. The fact remains that as the peasants have 
been compelled to sacrifice a seventh of their food supply, 
starvation has become their permanent condition. The 
economic machine has done wonders. 

But how can such a miracle have come to pass? How 



24 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

can the peasants have been induced to give up voluntarily 
(because there is no compulsion on the market) that which 
is absolutely necessary for their own sustenance ? We can 
well understand that a considerable rise in prices might 
tempt the farmers of the most prosperous country to part 
with a greater quantity of their produce than strict pru- 
dence would justify. But this has not been the case in 
Russia. The spoliation of our peasants has been effected 
not by an artificial rise in prices, but simply by an increased 
amount of money. Every fresh issue of rubles withdraws 
a corresponding quantity of bread, just as a heavy body 
thrown into the water displaces some of the liquid. There 
must, therefore, be something peculiar in Russia which di- 
minishes the usually strong, natural clinging of the culti- 
vator to the fruit of his industry to a surprising extent. 
Russian peasants, who work with relentless assiduity and 
pluck, on the State and capitalist tread-mill, would seem to 
have no hold whatever over the increase which the earth 
yields to their labor, and presumably for their advantage. 

To account for such a strange state of things we must 
leave the higher spheres of political economy and admin- 
istrative mechanism and observe what may be described as 
the molecular action of the system. We must descend to 
a Russian village, such as it has become since the Emanci- 
pation, and look into the normal economy of the peasant 
households of which it is composed. 



CHAPTER III. 

Russian peasants, as I have shown, cannot be regarded 
as ordinary resident owners, and herein lies the gist of oar 
agrarian question. Let us consider more closely the how 
and the why of this important fact. 

Serfdom as established in Russia by law and custom 
took in the regions where it struck root a form peculiar 
to itself. The landlords allotted to each peasant household 
a certain quantity of land, and allowed them to give to its 
cultivation, for their own benefit, a certain proportion of 
their time. For the rest of their time they labored on their 
master's land for his sole benefit, receiving therefor neither 
food nor pay. Few were the cases — when, for instance, the 
master was a manufacturer — where the serfs worked for 
him throughout the week, and were boarded and lodged at 
his expense. 

The allotment system of land prevailed everywhere, and 
the Government attempted to regulate the economical re- 
lations between serf and master by a law prescribing three 
days as the normal proportion of gratuitous work in the 
landlord's fields and three days in the peasant's. This law 
was, however, never strictly enforced. Rapacious masters 
could make their peasants work as long as they thought 
fit. Many kept the serfs four or five, some it was rumored 
six days, out of the seven, leaving only Sunday for the cul- 
tivation of their own holdings. It was evident that this 
state of things could not last. The economical law, that 
the producer's remuneration cannot fall below the minimum 



26 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

necessary for keeping him alive and enabling him to rear 
children, operates quickly and peremptorily in every slave- 
owning community. The master cannot change his slaves 
for an equal number of fresh ones after having worn them 
out. The improvident seigneur is inevitably ruined, and 
stern necessity imposed the three days' rule as being the 
only one which sufficed to keep the human cattle in good 
health and strength. It prevailed generally throughout the 
country. The peasants gave up to their masters three days a 
week, or, to speak more exactly, one half of their labor (men, 
Avomen, and horses), and kept the remainder for themselves. 
The Emancipation Committees, in making forecasts of the 
proposed Act, took for their basis the existing apportion- 
ment of the peasant's time. Since there was every reason 
to suppose that the former masters had given to their serfs 
rather less land than was strictly necessary, it was at first 
agreed, and very wisely, that the enfranchised peasants 
should not be allotted smaller allotments than they had pre- 
viously possessed. In carrying out the Emancipation Act 
this principle was, however, forgotten, altered, and mutilat- 
ed. The enfranchised peasants received much less than 
they had previously enjoyed. I will not dwell on the legal 
tricks by which this purpose was effected — the clause of the 
maximum allowing the spoliation of the serfs of the small- 
er nobility — nor the paragraphs about "orphan shares," 
which permitted the creation of 700,000 downright pro- 
letarians. Neither shall I do more than allude to the blun- 
ders in the Emancipation Act concerning the pasture and 
forest arrangements, nor to the abuses in the settlement of 
agrarian matters since made by the executive, which in 1863 
became decidedly reactionary, always favoring the landlords 
to the prejudice of their former serfs. All these details 
can have little interest for foreigners. Suffice it to say that 
the three or four dessiatines which the former serfs have 
on an average received are quite inadequate to provide 



THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 27 

them with bread. In the central provinces they only have 
bread for two hundred days in a year, often only for one 
hundred and eighty, or even one hundred. The agrarian 
arrangement, made for the benefit of the former State peas- 
ants in 1866, was far more satisfactory than that made in 
connection with the enfranchisement of the former serfs of 
the nobility. The State peasants were provided with twice 
as much land as the former serfs : a quantity sufficient on 
the whole to provide tliem with bread all the year round, 
supposing they had no other outgoings. 

But besides feeding themselves and their families the 
peasants have to make another outlay as peremptory as 
eating, while possessing none of the marvellous elasticity 
which distinguishes human wants in general and those of 
Eussian peasants in particular. They must pay the taxes, 
which, as the reader will presently learn, are rather heavy. 
In 1871, ten years after the Emancipation, when the first 
alarming symptoms of impoverishment among the peasants 
appeared, the Government appointed an Imperial Commis- 
sion to inquire into the condition of the peasantry. These 
inquiries brought to light the fact that in the thirty-seven 
provinces of European Russia the class of former State 
peasants pay in taxes of every description no less than 
92.75 per cent, of the average net produce of their land. 
As for the former serfs, being, as wx have said, much worse 
off than their brethren the State peasants, they have to pay 
a total taxation amounting on an average to 198.25 per 
cent, of the net produce of their land. 

Thus one half of our peasantry, the former State peasants, 
have to give up to the State almost all that the land grant- 
ed to them is capable of producing. The other moiety — 
the former serfs — pay away almost twice as much as the 
yield of their holdings. These are average figures, and of 
course not applicable to many particular cases. There are 
State peasants paying only from thirty to forty per cent, 



28 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

but there are also others who pay about one hundred and 
fifty per cent. (Smolensk, Kostroma, Vladimir provinces). 
There are former serfs paying from seventy-six to one hun- 
dred per cent. (Petersburg province), but there are others 
who pay two hundred and fifty per cent. (Tver, Vladimir 
provinces), or three hundred per cent. (Kazan province), 
and more. In the province of Novgorod, according to the 
ofiicial statement, there is a class of peasants who pay five 
hundred and sixty-five per cent.* This will seem not 
merely exorbitant, but altogether absurd. How, it may be 
asked, can a farmer pay in taxes the whole amount, or even 
twice or thrice as much as he gets from his land and yet live ? 

The solution of the enigma lies in the smallness of the 
allotments. Being insuflScient to furnish the peasants and 
their families with bread, they do not engross the whole of 
their working time. With our climate and our system of 
husbandry a peasant family averaging seven to eight mem- 
bers can cultivate fifty-four acres. Our peasants have only 
about a fourth of this, and the smaller their holdings the 
heavier relatively they are taxed. Former serfs, who spend 
on their diminutive allotments a fourth of their working 
time, and State peasants, who spend on theirs a little more 
than a third of their time, therefore pay to the State a half 
and a third respectively, because as touching the remainder 
of their work they are hardly taxed at all. These are heavy 
burdens. What would an English taxpayer say if he had 
to give up a third or a half of his income, however small it 
might be ? ' But the thing is comprehensible and clear. 

It is equally clear that our peasants, though "landed pro- 
prietors" in the eyes of the law, would not be so considered 
by an economist. Neither, on the other hand, could he 
classify them as agricultural proletarians. They stand be- 
tween the two. On the average, our peasants of both 

* Janson, " Essay on Allotment," pp. 85, 36, and following. 



THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 29 

classes can get from their land only about one-third of their 
livelihood, taxes included, hence the remaining two-thirds 
must be obtained by out -door work, and they are con- 
strained to seek occupation as day laborers, home artisans, 
metayerSy and so forth. They stand, in fact, one - third 
above the downright agrarian proletarian and two-thirds 
below the ordinary small resident owner. 

We shall, however, fail to realize the condition of our 
aocricultural classes if we do not take into account the flue- 
tuations of harvests. Were harvests always the same, our 
peasants would have to devote to their land exactly the 
same amount of time every year, and every year there would 
be the same supply of labor in the labor market. The po- 
sition would then be clear and constant for both parties — 
employers and employed. But it is not so in reality. Far 
from being constant, the harvest in Russia shows the wild- 
est fluctuations, depending, as it needs must in a country 
where agriculture is so primitive and backward, altogether 
on the caprices of nature and climate. The normal yield 
of grain is very low — only 2.9 for one (seed excluded) is 
the average for the whole Empire. But it varies greatly 
from year to year. In the fertile south-eastern and south- 
ern provinces, where agriculture is technically the worst, the 
fluctuations are the greatest. In the Middle Volga prov- 
inces in an average bad year the land yields three for one ; 
in an average good year, twelve for one; in a middling, six 
for one ; in an exceptionally good year, twenty to twenty- 
five for one. For Southern Russia in general the varia- 
tions of the harvest are eighty-seven per cent. In the cen- 
tral provinces, where the system of culture is technically 
somewhat better, the difference between the yearly harvests 
is not so great, reaching, however, forty-nine, forty-seven, 
and twenty-one per cent.* 

* Janson, " Essay on Allotment.*' 



30 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

This state of things materially affects the mutual rela- 
tions of landlords and peasants, and prevents any approach 
to regularity in the annual supply of labor. In an average 
year laborers in plenty can be obtained at average rates. 
In a bad year the peasants are in sore trouble and distress. 
They run after work in all directions and take it at starva- 
tion wages. In an exceptionally good year the position is 
reversed. The bulk of the peasants have plenty of work 
in harvesting their own crops, which they will never aban- 
don for ordinary wages. Working on their own land they 
earn at the same time wages, rent, and the profit on capital. 
A day's labor for himself brings the peasant in as much as 
the wages of three days* work. So it comes to pass that 
there is a dearth of labor at the very moment when the 
landlords are most in need of hands to gather an abundant 
harvest. Under these circumstances it is not surprising 
that wages vary enormously. In bad years the wages in 
the Middle Volga provinces are from seventy to a hundred 
per cent, lower than in good years. In years of exceptional 
abundance wages are so high in the sout4i-eastern provinces, 
the Russian granary, that it does not pay to reap the har- 
vest unless 4000 lbs. of wheat, or thirteen to one, are 
expected from a dessiatine. The field which does not 
promise thus much is left unharvested, and the ripe grain 
perishes under the burning sun. 

Letting alone exceptional cases, it may be said that every 
change in the harvest reacts in a contrary sense, but in 
much greater proportion, on the prices paid for agricultu- 
ral work. Th6 widely differing conditions of the peasants, 
consequent on the varying size of their holdings, causes ev- 
ery change in the harvest to throw in or out of the labor 
market a varying quantity of hands. 

Nothing can be more absurd or disastrous for both par- 
ties and for the country in general than such a system as 
this. Professor Engelhardt, writing from the Smolensk prov- 



THE KUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 31 

ince, truly observes that very high wages would be better 
for the landlords than these perpetual variations. A fixed 
rent for land and a fixed interest on capital invested in ag- 
riculture should once for all be established. As things are, 
every year takes its chance, and all is based on speculation. 
M. Giliaransky, writing about the opposite extremity of the 
Empire, the region of the enormous cereal plantations of 
the Middle Volga, comes to the same conclusion, and viv- 
idly expresses it by saying that in his country professional 
usurers and landlords holding 150,000 acres are the only 
members of the community whose solvency is not open to 
doubt. The smaller fry know not whether in another year 
they will be utterly ruined or rolling in wealth. 

There could be only one issue from this indescribable 
economical chaos. The landlords, certainly the stronger of 
the two contending parties, being unable to secure a regu- 
lar supply of low-priced labor by means of economic com- 
pulsion, have had to resort to a more direct and brutal form 
of constraint. 

This they have found in the new system of bondage, or, 
to use the Russian word, the kabola^ which has become an 
important and continually increasing influence in Russian 
rural life, and is, in effect a simple revival, in a somewhat 
milder form, of the ancient serfdom. 



CHAPTER IV. 

The word kabala is very ancient. In old annals and 
juridical records it was used to designate the document by 
which a destitute but free man sold himself to some rich 
man as his slave. Later on it was used colloquially to sig- 
nify the state of slavery. One would have thought that 
after emancipation there should have been no further occa- 
sion for this ill-omened word, that it should have become 
obsolete. But it was not allowed to die, and is now used 
by Russian peasants to denote that dependency of the 
laborer on his employer which arises from the former's 
irretrievable indebtedness and impecuniosity. 

That a modern Russian peasant is always liable to fall 
deeply into debt is unfortunately too easily demonstrated. 
The ordinary peasant household, taking peasants of every 
class, has to give up in taxes of all descriptions forty -five 
per cent, of its whole income (industrial work included), or 
in other terms, about three days' work in a week. This is 
rather heavy, of course. The old democrat, Ogareff, co- 
editor with Ilerzen of the London Kolokol (Bell), was quite 
right in stigmatizing the agrarian arrangement of 1861 as 
a new sort of serfdom, in which the State was substituted 
for the former seigneurs. Having only three days in the 
week, or, what is the same, one-half of the family's working 
force for their own behoof, it follows that in order to make 
both ends meet — to live and pay taxes — the peasants must 
contrive never to be out of work. 

Now all the employments open to them are very uncer> 
tain. The rent of land, hired from neighboring lords for 



THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 33 

sliort terms, generally a year, is very heavy, owing to the 
fierce competition of the whole body of peasants. In the 
thickly populated black earth region the rent has risen 
since the Emancipation three and four fold in twenty years. 
On the character of the harvest depends entirely the peas- 
ants' chance of profit, if there be any. Agricultural work for 
wages is still more precarious. If in the far distant provinces, 
whither the peasants rush in swarms from the thickly popu- 
lated centres, the crops are good, the local people keep to 
their own fields, wages run high, the new-comers find employ- 
ment readily, and return to their homes with money in their 
pockets. If, however, the harvest be bad they earn noth- 
ing, and have to make their way back barefoot and penni- 
less, begging in Christ's name a crust of bread to keep 
themselves alive. 

The in-door industries, in which the majority of Great 
Russian (Central) peasants are mostly engaged, are less 
remunerative than formerly, owing to the competition of 
the great manufactories on the one hand, and the gangrene 
of usury, to which all these home-working artisans are more 
and more exposed, on the other. 

Work in manufactories is naturally the most certain. 
Put it requires a special training, and occupies less than a 
million hands, one-half of whom are ordinary town prole- 
tarians. Thus the economical position of our peasants is 
most strained and precarious. Notwithstanding their sur- 
prising industry and courage, their future is never sure. A 
deficit in their yearly budget is always possible, and indeed 
of frequent occurrence, leaving them no alternative save 
insolvency at the hands of the Government or a diminished 
consumption of food. These expedients, however, cannot 
be adopted indefinitely. The patience of tax-collectors is 
very short, and when exhausted is quickly followed by 
severe floggings and the forced sale of the insolvent's be- 
longings. 
3 



34 THE KUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

The power of self-restraint is very great with our peas- 
ants, and the elasticity of their stomachs is simply surpris- 
ing. But even these qualities have their limits. Both 
children and adults, when the last crust of bread is con- 
sumed, will ask for more; and the cattle, which with Russian 
peasants are an object of even greater solicitude than their 
children, cannot be left to starve. The peasant makes up 
his mind and looks around for some "benefactor" from 
whom he can borrow something. 

Here we must pause. We are now at the turning-point 
of our social life, and the new figure which has to play the 
most prominent part therein is stepping on to the stage — 
we mean the " benefactor" or usurer. He is of two strongly 
marked types. The more numerous, and by far the more 
important of the class, socially and politically, are those who 
have themselves sprung from the ranks of the peasants. 
These are koulaks, or miV-eaters, as our people call them. 
They make a class apart — the aristocracy, or rather the plu- 
tocracy, of our villages. Every village commune has always 
three or four regular koulaks, as also some half-dozen small- 
er fry of the same kidney. The koulaks are peasants who, 
by good-luck or individual ability, have saved money and 
raised themselves above the common herd. This done, the 
way to further advancement is easy and rapid. They want 
neither skill nor industry, only promptitude to turn to their 
profit the needs, the sorrows, the sufferings, and the mis- 
fortunes of others. 

The great advantage the koulaks possess over their nu- 
merous competitors in the plundering of the peasants lies 
in the fact that they are members, generally very influential 
members, of the village commune. This often enables 
them to use for their private ends the great political power 
which the self-governing mir exercises over each individual 
member. The distinctive characteristics of this class are 
very unpleasant. It is the hard, unflinching cruelty of a 



THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 35 

thoroughly uneducated man who has made his way from 
poverty to wealth, and has come to consider money-making, 
by whatever means, as the only pursuit to which a rational 
being should devote himself. Koulaks, as a rule, are by 
no means devoid of natural intelligence and practical good- 
sense, and may be considered as fair samples of that rapa- 
cious and plundering stage of economic development which 
occupies a place analogous to that of the middle ages in 
political history. 

The regular landlords, remnants of the old nobility, or 
new men, who have bought their land and stepped into 
their shoes, also play a very conspicuous part in the opera- 
tions of rural credit, though, being total strangers in the 
communes, they afe naturally less directly responsible for 
the interior decomposition of our village life. Acting as a 
rule through their managers and agents, who have no per- 
sonal interests to serve, these large proprietors are in reality 
the least exacting of the gang. Yet when in difficulty the 
peasant will always try the koulaks first, who are peasants 
like himself. He dreads the formalities, the documents, the 
legal tricks and cavils which the big people have in store 
for a " benighted " man. 

In the extensive operations of rural credit, consisting 
chiefly of small advances, but amounting in the aggregate 
to many millions of rubles yearly, the koulaks and rural 
usurers generally gain a far greater profit than do the land- 
lords proper. 

The petty capitalists who settle in the villages for busi- 
ness purposes, small shopkeepers, wine dealers, merchants, 
who always combine their special trade with more or less 
extensive land culture, occupy an intermediary position be- 
tweeii that of the koulaks and the big landlords. They are 
outsiders like the latter, having by our laws no share in the 
administration of the commune, which is exclusively con- 
trolled by born or naturalized^easants. But by their edu- 



36 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

cation (or better, absence of education) and general tenor 
of life they arc as near to the peasants as the koulaks, and 
by no means inferior to the latter in knowledge of local 
conditions, or in pluck, roughness, and cruelty. 

Such are the classes who control rural credit. Whatever 
be its individual source in each particular case, it is based 
on the same principle and produces the same social results. 
I sTaall therefore analyze its forms and influence cumula- 
tively. 

Regular credit — i.e.y advance of money to be returned in 
money, with the addition of interest — is very rare in our 
villages, unless it refers to trifling sums advanced by rural 
pawnbrokers. Peasants receive too little ready money to be 
able to depend on it for the discharge of their obligations. 
Loans are generally made only to whole villages or to peas- 
ants' associations under the guarantee and responsibility of 
the mir. As to the interest required, and the general char- 
acter of these loans, they remind us rather of Shylock's 
bond than of ordinary business transactions. 

In January, 1880, a large village of the Samara province, 
Soloturn, borrowed from a merchant of the name of Jaroff 
the sum of £600, interest being paid in advance, and 
bought from Jaroff s stock 15,000 pouds of hay for their 
starving cattle. Repayment was to be made on October 
1st, 1880, under the condition that £5 should be added for 
every day's delay. When the time of payment arrived the 
peasants brought £200 on account of their debt to Jaroff, 
who made not the slightest objection to w^aiting for the 
balance. For eleven months thereafter he kept quiet But 
in September, 1881, he brought an action against the vil- 
lage for £1500. The magistrate before whom the case was 
tried, being evidently in a frame of mind not unlike that 
of Antonio's judges, decided against the plaintiff. But 
Jaroff was not much discouraged thereby. Confident in 
bis right, he appealed to a higher court and won his case. 



THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 37 

And as this proceeding caused farther delay, the claim, by 
accumulation of interest, had doubled, and Jaroff got judg- 
ment for £3000 in satisfaction of a debt of £600, of which 
£200 had been repaid !* 

In the Novousen district of the same province the peas- 
ants of the village of Shendorf, being in great distress dur- 
ing the winter of 1880, borrowed from a clergyman named 

K £700, undertaking to pay him in eight months 

£1050 {i.e.y fifty per cent, for eight months) on condition 

that in case of default they should give Mr. K , pending 

repayment, 3500 dessiatines of their arable land at an an- 
nual rent of ten copecks per dessiatine. As the peasants 

were unable to fulfil their engagement, Mr. K received 

the 3500 dessiatines for 350 rubles, and forthwith re-let 
the land to the peasants themselves at the normal rent, 
which in this province is about five rubles (lOs.) per des- 
siatine. Thus he obtained £1715 on a capital of £700, or 
interest at the rate of about 250^ a year.f 

I have quoted these examples because they possess much 
of what the French call couleur locale, and are eminently 
suggestive of the spirit and flavor of the financial transac- 
tions practised in our villages. They give also an idea of 
the great distress which prevails among peasants during the 
winter months, because nobody, unless on the verge of star- 
vation, would enter into such engagements as those I have 
described. 

The winter is, indeed, the hardest season of the year for 
our peasantry. The spring, too, has its difiiculties, but by 
then field work is beginning on the neighboring land- 
lords' estates, and the peasants have a chance of earning a 
trifle. In the winter their resources are at their lowest ebb, 
for in September the corn was sold to pay the autumn 
taxes, while others fall due in the spring. If the household 

* Annals, No. 272. f Idem. 



38 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

be not well off it generally has some arrears to make up, 
wbicli are " flogged out " in winter. In a word, and to use 
their own expression, calamities beset the poor peasants 
from every quarter, " like snow on their heads," and they 
cannot avoid turning towards their " benefactors," and con- 
senting to the most Shylockian conditions. 

Regular money credit, even at the heaviest interest, is, as 
I have said, exceptional. Individual peasants never obtain 
it from a rich man, because he will not trust them without 
good security. Credit is mostly given on the security of 
the peasants' work, their hands being their most valuable 
possession. It assumes the form of payment in anticipation 
for work to be done in the next season — a sort of hypothe- 
cation of work, to be performed several months thereafter. 

Agreements of this kind are always legalized at the com- 
munal oflSces, and often copied in their register books ; it 
is very easy, therefore, to obtain a fair idea of their charac- 
ter. Investigators of various branches of our agrarian work 
have preserved for us these interesting documents. 

I now have before me three such deeds — one referring to 
the beet-root sugar plantations of the south-west ; a second 
to the rafting of wood and timber down the rivers, an occu- 
pation in which the peasants of the northern sylvan regions 
find their chief livelihood ; and a third, which refers to 
purely agricultural work. In two the terms are almost 
identical, and even in the third the difference is but slight. 
Mr. Tchervinsky says that in his province there are special 
scribblers, who, having learned the wording of these docu- 
ments by heart, make their living by rewriting them for each 
occasion, changing only the names. Mr. Giliaransky tran- 
scribes the form of agreement for agricultural work from a 
printed original. I will give here a summary of the lat- 
ter, as being the most important and characteristic, and as 
affording a fair idea of the others. 

These agreements always begin by setting forth in great 



THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 39 

detail the work to be done, and fixing the number of des- 
siatines to be sown, ploughed, or harvested. Then follow a 
series of paragraphs intended to secure due observance of 
the conditions on the part of the peasant : 

**I, the undersigned, agree to submit myself to all the rules and 
customs in force on the estates of N. N. During the period of work 
I will be perfectly obedient to N. N.'s managers, and will not refuse to 
work at nights, not only at such work as I have undertaken to do, as 
set forth above, but any other work that may be required of me. 
Moreover I have no right to keep Sundays and holidays." 

For securing good work the imposition of heavy penalties 
is agreed to beforehand by the subscriber, generally four 
or five times in excess of any damage his negligence can 
occasion, thereby affording a hundred pretexts for malversa- 
tions, and yet quite failing in preventing the work from 
being on the whole very badly done. 

A very important proviso remains to be noticed. The 
agreement never omits to mention that it retains its bind- 
ing power for an indefinite number of years. Thus, if 
the landlord should not require his debtor to work in the 
immediately following summer (as might happen were the 
harvest deficient, and labor cheap and easily obtainable) he 
is free to call on him to liquidate his debt in the following 
year, or even the year after, thus securing for himself cheap 
labor at the time when wages are likely to be at their max- 
imiim. 

The concluding paragraph is to the same effect. It states 
that should the debtor he unable or unwilling to discharge 
his debty or a part of it, in work, and desire to discharge it 
in ready money, he must pay a prescription amounting to 
four or five times the original loan. 

The reader will perceive that the peasants do no violence 
to the exact etymological value of the word in calling the 
winter agreement kabala, or bondage. 

As to the purely economical side of the question — the 



40 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

rate of usury enforced under this system of anticipated pay- 
ment of wages — we have only to compare the difference 
between the averao:e wao-e of the laborer hired in summer 
and that of the unfortunates who are compelled to give 
themselves *'in bondage" during the lean months of winter. 

Here I quote a few well authenticated statements refer- 
ring to the entire agricultural zone of the Empire. Accord- 
ing to Mr. Trirogoff, the harvesting of one dessiatine in the 
province of Saratoff costs on an average eight rubles if 
carried by laborers engaged in the summer at market rates, 
while the laborer engaged in the winter receives three or 
four rubles for the same work. It is no uncommon thing, 
he adds, to see laborers of each class working side by side, 
the one for ten the other for three and a half rubles per 
dessiatine. Mr. Giliaransky states that in the Samara prov- 
ince the whole rotation of agricultural work for a dessia- 
tine of land costs fifteen to twenty rubles at ordinary rates. 
But those laborers who are engaged in the winter are on 
an average only paid five rubles. In the Tamboff prov- 
ince, according to Mr. Ertel, free laborers receive from nine 
to eleven rubles, while the "bondage" (winter engaged) 
laborers are paid only from four to five. In the Kieff prov- 
ince, on the beet-root plantations, the free workers receive 
eight rubles and upward for fifteen days' work, the bond- 
age laborers only three. In the Kamenez-Podolsk province 
(south-west) the daily wage of free laborers is forty-five 
copecks in the spring and sixty copecks in summer, while 
the bondage laborers are paid in the same season fifteen and 
twenty copecks. 

Thus in the Samara province the money-lenders exact 
an interest equal to three hundred per cent.; in Saratoff, two 
hundred per cent. ; in Tamboff, one hundred and eight ; in 
Kieff, one hundred and sixty-six ; in the Kamenez-Podolsk, 
two hundred per cent, on their capital, lent for a period gen- 
erally not exceeding nine months. 



THE RUSSIAN AGEARIAN QUESTI01^» 41 

This looks very ugly. But if the reader thinks these 
are exceptional extortions, of which a few greedy usurers 
alone are guilty, he is mistaken. There is no lack of ex- 
ceptions, but they present an even blacker picture. In 
November and December, 1881, the judge of the Valuj dis- 
trict (Voronej province) had to give judgment upon forty- 
five suits against as many groups of peasants for failure 

to fulfil their eno;aocement with their landlord, J . The 

facts were that during the winter months of 1881 the lat- 
ter advanced to the peasants of several surrounding villages 
a quantity of straw wherewith to feed their cattle. The 
peasants had promised, as usual, to harvest for him a fixed 
number of dessiatines, but many — in all forty-five groups — 
had failed to observe the conditions agreed upon. To give 
an idea of these conditions, I may mention that one of 
the groups, in a moment of sore distress, had engaged to 
harvest, in return for twelve cubic yards of straw advanced 
to them, no less than thirty-five dessiatines of corn. They 
harvested twenty-one dessiatines, which represented at cur- 
rent prices one hundred and five rubles, but being unable 
to harvest the remaining fourteen dessiatines they had to 
pay one hundred and thirty rubles more. Thus two hun- 
dred and thirty-five rubles were demanded for about five 
rubles' worth of straw. I leave the reader to calculate how 
much per cent, such usury denotes. 

In the Oufa province there are two great villages called 
XJsman and Karmaly, with about 1200 inhabitants. The 
peasants hold in common 3890 dessiatines of land. In 
1880 they borrowed from a clerk named Rvanzeff 1019 
rubles wherewith to pay their taxes. For this loan they 
agreed to let to him all their 3890 dessiatines of land for 
three years at two rubles a dessiatine, whereas the minimum 
rent in this district is six to seven rubles. In 1881 the 
peasants, now left without land, rented their own holdings 
from Rvanzelf at seven to eight rubles a dessiatine, thus giv- 



42 THE PwUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

ing this gentleman a profit of 20,895 rubles, or an interest 
of 2000 per cent, for the first year, and three times that 
amount if all the three years are taken together, on a capi- 
tal of 1019 rubles * 

Here is another instance, which is not confined to a few 
groups of individual peasants. In 1879, in the province of 
Oufa, the whole harvest was bought from the Bashkir peas- 
ants for an advance of twenty copecks per poud (40 lbs.) 
made durins: the winter. The next autumn it was resold 
to the same Bashkirs for one ruble twenty copecks (120 
copecks) per poud, making an interest of 500 per cent, for 
about eight months. 

This is really exceptional, though many pages could be 
filled with similar examples, which each year brings to light. 
It is what is called in Russia " usury." The transactions 
as to which I have calculated the approximate interest in 
various provinces are not considered usurious at all. They 
are only "private winter engagements," which are imposed 
every year on millions of peasants in every region of the 
Empire — in the agricultural and in the industrial, as well as 
in the sylvan. Far from considering it as something to be 
ashamed of, the money-lenders always pose as the peasants' 
" benefactors," in that they have consented to lend them 
money on such easy terms. 

Whatever be the name we give to it, usury always re- 
mains usury, and everywhere possesses the attribute of grad- 
ually swallowing up all those who have the misfortune to 
step within its bounds, like a quaking bog. After discharg- 
ing out of his very modest and strained resources such 
exorbitant claims as I have described (no matter what form 
the usury takes), the peasant will, generally speaking, be 
worse off the next autumn than he was the year before. Pie 
will have greater difficulty in defraying the taxes and in 



* 6^0^05, 1882, No. 113. 



THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 43 

providing for his own wants. Unless unusually good-luclc 
befall him, he will be obliged during the winter to apply 
once more, and probably for a larger advance, to his " bene« 
factor." Very often he will have been unable to execute all 
the heavy obligations previously undertaken. Some arrears 
will still remain to be added, with accumulated interest, to 
his debt of work, a debt from which he can never, except 
by the help of some windfall or godsend, escape. 

Only very large families, which are becoming less com- 
mon, are able to extricate themselves from the usurer's net, 
in which they have been by dire misfortune entangled. 
When the liability is divided among twelve or more adults 
they may compensate for the absence of one or two of 
their number "given in bondage" by increased diligence 
on the part of those that remain. But small families al- 
most inevitably succumb. Mr. Trirogoff tells us that the 
peasants themselves are convinced that when a man has 
once been caught by the rural usurer he must remain " in 
bondage" to the end of his days. And in nine cases out of 
ten this proves true. 

Thus the new economical r^^me which has struck root 
in Russia is not only extending but acquiring a permanent 
force. "In the Saratoif province whole districts are in a 
state of bondage." * " In the Samara province there are 
many villages, small and great, which have the bulk of 
their working strength pawned, or given in bondage, to use 
the peasant's expression, for many years to come, to sundry 
large corn growers." f In the Ousman district alone (Tam- 
boff province), according to Mr. Ertel's very moderate esti- 
mate, the winter engagements amount to 240,000 rubles, 
equal to about 500,000 rubles a year at market value. 
There is no province, no district, in which the system does 
not extensively obtain. 

* Trirogoff. f Giliaransky. 



44 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTKY. 

In sorae provinces it becomes from the first a permanent 
bondage without the money-lender having the trouble and 
expense of rebinding his client every year, or of involving 
him in the net of accumulated interest. One of the experts 
for the Kherson province made the following statement 
before the official inquiry commission, as registered in its 
official records: *'With us," he said, "there exists another 
mode of harvesting, extremely ruinous for the peasants. 
They receive from some landlord a loan of ten rubles (£1), 
and in return are under the obligation of harvesting, in lieu 
of interest, one dessiatine of corn and two dessiatines of hay, 
and of refunding the capital sum in the autumn. If, how- 
ever, the money is not refunded, the same agreement holds 
good for the next year, and so on. New loans are not 
refused, but are made under the same conditions. Thus 
the peasants gradually fall into a state of bondage worse 
than was the old serfdom, for they are generally unable to 
refund the capital, and obliged to work from year to year 
quite gratuitously." 

In the province of Kieff yet another form of bondage 
obtains which approaches still more nearly the form of the 
old serfdom. Here the landlord advances eighteen rubles, 
for which sum he is entitled to receive in lieu of interest 
two days' work per w^eek, i,e,, one hundred and four days a 
year. The women have to do similar slave-work as interest 
for an advance of twelve rubles. The advance of one-half 
of these sums entitles the landlord to one day a week. If 
the peasant misses a day he is mulcted in fifty copecks (a 
woman thirty-five copecks), the amount being put to his 
debit. When these mulcts reach the sum of nine rubles 
for a man and six for a woman, another day a week is added 
by way of interest to their debt.* 

At this point, however, exploitation of the peasant's labors 

^ Kieff Telegraph, 1875, No. 52. 



THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 45 

receives a self-acting check. Credit on the hypothecation 
of future earnings is limited by the amount of work which 
it is physically possible for the debtor to perform. In the 
fertile steppes of the south-wester-n region, so highly favored 
by nature and the Emancipation Act, which gave them the 
largest allotments, and in isolated districts where the peas- 
ants are exceptionally well off,- the struggle between land- 
lords and peasants has ended in the subjugation of the 
latter in the way I have described, but has gone no further. 
In all these places credit assumes chiefly the form of the 
hypothecation of future labor. 

But in less favored regions, and especially in the densely 
populated central provinces of the Empire, other and more 
desperate and ruinous forms of credit are being developed 
with alarming rapidity. Potential property, labor, ceases 
to be a sufficient guarantee for the money-lenders. The 
impoverished peasants, driven to despair by famine or by 
fear of a forced sale of their effects, borrow money right 
and left, undertaking to give the lenders three times more 
work than they are physically able to perform. To avoid 
disappointment and the troubles of litigation, the usurers 
demand as security substantial property — the very imple- 
ments of agricultural work, the cattle and the land. Both 
produce identical and almost equally rapid results. Depri- 
vation of cattle and loss of land go on simultaneously. 

The peasant's indispensable instruments of labor, the 
cattle, are sold in enormous quantities. The sales arc made 
during the winter months and in the spring, chiefly at the 
time when the taxes and arrears are " flogged out." This 
accounts for the curious fact that in the provincial towns a 
pound of meat is sometimes cheaper than a pound of bread. 
Exports of cattle have increased for the same reason enor- 
mously ; the increase since 1864 is equal to 1335 per cent. 

Statistics likewise disclose, in the thirteen provinces of 
Central Russia, a decrease of 17.6 per cent, in large cattle 



46 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

and a redaction of 27.8 per cent, in the quantity of harvest- 
ed corn, notwithstanding the increase (6.6 per cent.) of the 
population since 1864; the inventory of horses taken in 
1882 for military purposes shows that one fourth of the 
peasant households no longer possess horses at all.* 

A peasant who has lost his cattle can no longer be con- 
sidered a tiller of the soil. His imprescriptible right as the 
member of a village community to a share in the land becomes 
purely nominal and practically void. Yet, though he may 
give up agricultural work in his allotment, and can no longer 
in any way turn it to account, he still remains liable for the 
taxes. 

Very often the peasant's road to ruin is reversed ; the 
sale of his cattle not sufficing to meet his engagements, he 
is obliged to part, bit by bit, with his land. True, the laws 
in force do not permit peasants to sell their allotments for 
which the price of redemption — payment for which in most 
cases extends over forty-nine years from 1861 — has not been 
provided. But the law in this regard is evaded by the expe- 
dient of long leases. The letting of land by peasants to 
capitalists of the upper classes — burghers, clergymen, or 
nobles — is exceptional. It is done wholesale by entire mirs, 
and generally for short periods. Letting to koulaks, or 
peasant capitalists, is, on the contrary, quite common and 
much in vogue. It is done wholesale and retail both by 
groups and by individual peasants. The law cannot inter- 
fere with the mutual relations of members of the same 
community. At the present time the new peasant hour- 
geoisie^ the koulaks, legally have got into their hands vast 
quantities of inalienable communal land under the form of 
long leases, which they will hold until the " next redistribu- 
tion.'' The peasants, the nominal proprietors, work on it 
meanwhile as agrarian proletarians. 

* Janson. 



THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 47 

There are no complete estimates as to the area of land 
engrossed by this new rural aristocracy, but isolated inqui- 
ries in the central provinces, where the process of social fer- 
mentation has been the most marked, prove it to be very 
considerable. Writing about one of the Tamboff districts, 
which are rather favored by the agrarian settlement — the 
Ousman district, where the majority of the population were 
formerly State peasants — Mr. Ertel states that in an average 
and rather prosperous district, which he selected for investi- 
gation, 25,258 peasants' households (one-third) pawned some 
of their land every year. The total area of land pawned to 
the koulaks was 8419 dessiatines a year in the mean. 

Mr. Tereshkevitch, chairman of the Statistical Board of 
the Poltava province, in a work to which was awarded the 
great gold medal of the St, Petersburg Geographical Socie- 
ty, shows that in the Poltava province, the land of the for- 
mer Cossacks, inalienable by law, is concentrated, to the ex- 
tent of 24 to 32.6 per cent, of the total area, in the hands 
of rich koulaks. Here 16.5 to 29.8 per cent, of the popu- 
lation are downright landless proletarians. Nearly one-half 
(forty-three to forty-nine per cent.) have their land cur- 
tailed, sometimes to one-fourth^ one-fifth, and one-sixteenth 
of a dessiatine ; so that, according to the peasant's graphic 
expression, ** the rain falls from your own roof on to your 
neighbor's land." The koulaks, however, who constitute 5.4 
per cent, of the population, have twenty dessiatines (54 
acres) and upwards per household, and among them are 
many who hold 100 dessiatines (270 acres), sometimes 300 
dessiatines (810 acres), of the richest black soil, per house- 
hold.* 

Having no positive figures for the whole Empire, I shall 
not venture to estimate, even approximately, how great a 
proportion of the peasants' land the mir-eaters, or koulaks, 

* Eeport of the Geographical Society for 1885. 



48 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

have already devoured. But we can gauge the havoc they 
have wrought in another way — by the number of agricul- 
tural proletarians, landless and homeless, that modern Rus- 
sia possesses. 

In the epoch of Emancipation Russia had no agricultural 
proletariat whatever. It was expected that our traditional 
system of land tenure, with periodical redistributions, would 
preserve Russia forever from this drawback of old civiliza- 
tions. Some ten years later, however, it was discovered 
that agrarian proletarianism had already come to be a fact. 
In 1871, according to the calculations of Prince Vasltchi- 
koff, districts existed in Russia where five, ten, and even 
fifteen per cent, of the rural population had become down- 
right proletarians. " Since that time " (I am quoting the 
words of so unimpeachable an authority as the chairman of 
the St. Petersburoj Cono-ress of Russian Farmers, held on the 
4th of March, 1886) "the agrarian proletariat has increased 
with alarming rapidity. From the statistical investigations 
of the Moscow and other zemstvos, we are able to affirm 
that the number of proletarians has increased at least from 
fifteen to twenty-five per cent. This shows that one-fifth 
of the whole population of the Empire (one-third of the 
rural population of Russia proper), or about twenty millions 
of souls, are agrarian proletarians. Thus the number of 
proletarians we have at present is equal to the number of 
serfs Russia possessed before the Emancipation. And I 
will not venture to judge how far the life of our modern 
agrarian proletarian is preferable to that of the former 
serfs." 

Further on in the same speech the causes of this devasta- 
tion and miserable condition of our agriculture are pointed 
out: 

"Thriving estates are those where the proprietors use 
* bondage' (kahala) labor — rair- eaters and usurious land- 
lords (practising the winter engagement system) — and per- 



THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION, 49 

baps that of peasants with large families. For all the rest, 
agriculture has become a risky and not very profitable busi- 
ness. The * bondage' labor, which is chiefly used by the 
landlords, is a labor of the lowest quality, much inferior 
to that of the former serfs; while the 'bondage' peasants 
themselves, wasting an enormous quantity of their working 
time on the landlords' estates, are unable to cultivate their 
own, and even tolerably, and must drop husbandry alto- 
gether." 
4 



CHAPTER V. 

The results of emancipation, a measure from which so 
much was expected, must needs greatly disappoint all who 
are in favor of peasant ownership, especially if they have 
likewise put some trust in the Russian communaL system of 
land tenure. But those who hold the opposite view will 
probably conclude that the process of peasant spoliation, 
though a painful process, and an unavoidable evil, is yet in 
some sort an advantage, since it may be the beginning of a 
new development of agriculture which will eventually put 
Russia on a level with Western countries, and force on it 
the same system of land tenure. 

It is quite evident that Russia is marching in this direc- 
tion. If nothing happens to check or hinder the process 
of interior disintegration in our villages, in another genera- 
tion we shall have on one side an agricultural proletariat of 
sixty to seventy millions, and on the other a few thousand 
landlords, mostly former koulaks and mir-eaters, in possession 
of all the land. When starvation has depleted the market of 
some ten or fifteen millions of superfluous agricultural pro- 
letarians, the landlords will doubtless introduce an improved 
system of agriculture of the regular European type, and the 
remainder of our rural population will become common 
wage-laborers. Then and only then will there begin true 
agricultural progress in Russia. In the present transitory 
stage, however, the landlord system is technically as bad as 
it well can be. It is chiefly based on bondage labor, which 
is cheaper than any other — cheaper than machinery, cheaper 
than that of the worst paid common laborers, who must be 



THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 51 

nourished, after all, at their master's expense, and get some- 
thing (from £4 to £5 a year) for taxes and clothing. As 
to bondage labor, it can be got for next to nothing after 
the first payment. Then the work done merely represents 
the exorbitant interest on the trifling sums advanced years 
before, to which may have been added, out of pity, a few 
sums equally trifling. 

But the peasant enslaved by usury has repaid his.cxtortion- 
ers in another way — by the utter negligence, slovenliness, 
and dirtiness of his work. He is bound to labor on the 
landlord-creditor's land, and ostensibly conforms to the con- 
ditions of his bond. No power on earth, however, can pre- 
vent his working as hastily and as badly as he is able — 
from doing his " level worst," as an American would say. 
No amount of superintendence can compel diligence, unless, 
indeed, the landlord has one superintendent for every bonds- 
man. These men cannot be terrorized and beaten into 
carefulness and industry as were the former serfs. On the 
other hand, neither is he in the least impressed, as the free 
wage-laborer is, by dread of dismissal. He has, in a word, 
no motive whatever to work well, and every reason on earth 
to get rid of his ungrateful task as quickly as may be. The 
work supplied by the bondage system is of the worst possi- 
ble description. Mr. Giliaransky says, 

" Where the free peasants harvest five stacks, the bondage 
people harvest only four or three and a half. In the field 
you recognize at first sight the work done by bondage peo- 
ple and by free laborers. With the latter the freshly mown 
field presents a nice even surface, showing no trace of for- 
mer vegetation, while the bondage laborers always leave 
long strips of grass unmown. In the fields of well-to-do 
peasants you will find not a handful of spikes or straw, the 
closely cut stubble-field extends even and uniform like a 
hair -brush on every side. But the fields of the big land- 
lords, after the bondage people's harvesting, are pictures of 



52 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

haste and dirt. Here and there you see black spots, as if 
swine had been grubbing ; these are places where the chil- 
dren, in helping their elders, have uprooted the crops with 
their hands. Great clumps of unreaped grain are left be- 
hind, and the whole field, covered with scattered spikes and 
straw, seems rather creased and trampled than mown." 

With such methods as these no improvement in husband- 
ry can be thought of. Scientific culture is impossible. The 
cereal planters understand all this only too well, and, taking 
the bondage work as it is, make splendid profits by specu- 
lating on the enormous extension of tillage, thus compensat- 
ing by the extent of land cultivated for the very low techni- 
cal quality of the culture. 

Such few estates as are in a satisfactory, sometimes even 
a model state of cultivation, are those where the proprietors 
have adopted the heroic resolution of keeping an adequate 
number of permanent laborers, and paying them fair wages 
^— in other words, of investing considerable capital, and 
getting for it small though regular returns. Such capital- 
ist heroism is, however, necessarily exceptional. The great 
majority of capitalists find it much more advantageous to 
spend as little as possible on each acre, keeping only a small 
staff of managers on permanent wages, speculating on the 
extreme cheapness of labor, and avoiding the costly luxury 
of scientific agriculture. 

The koulaks and mir-eaters, the new land forestallers of 
peasant origin, are in a much better position as touching 
bondage work than are their fellow loan-mongers of the up- 
per crust. These rural Crassuses very often wield the same 
influence in their diminutive village republics as their pro- 
tagonist, the famous Roman usurer, wielded in Rome, and 
for the same reasons; a koulak is not to be trifled with, and 
a poor peasant, his debtor, will think twice before cheating 
him as he would cheat a landlord. He well knows that the 
koulak will find a thousand occasions for revenge. More- 



THE RUSSIAN AGJiARIAN QUESTION. 53 

over, the koulak and all the members of his family work 
together on the same fields as their bondsmen, keeping con- 
stant watch over them. 

On the whole, the koulaks and mir-eaters, as all observers 
agree, obtain by the bondage system tolerably good work. 
Working for a koulak exhausts the peasant's strength, while 
work on a landlord's estate, is little more than a waste of 
time. Employing a much greater proportion of bondage 
work relatively to their capital than the regular landlords, 
and possessing the above-mentioned advantages, the koulaks 
and mir-eaters grow in numbers, riches, and power with 
startling rapidity. But being in so advantageous a position, 
the koulaks have even less inducement than the regular 
landlords to change their tactics and waste money on any 
permanent improvements. So long as there is a crowd of 
people on whom they can impose their yoke so cheaply and 
.easily, their culture will continue to be as loose and preda- 
tory as it has hitherto been ; only, instead of exhausting 
the land, as the regular landlords are doing, they are ex- 
hausting the laborer. 

Thus the concentration of land in the hands of individual 
proprietors has imparted as yet neither order nor progress 
to our agriculture. The process of land concentration, if 
not stopped, will doubtless achieve in time both these re- 
sults, but in another way — by starving out an adequate part 
of our rural population. It may be added that this chari- 
table work is going on with the greatest success. I will 
not go into details, neither will I harrow the reader by sen- 
sational pictures. I shall only quote figures, some statisti- 
cal, which speak for themselves. 

The rate of mortality in the whole of Russia is very high, 

fluctuating between 35.4 and 37.3 per thousand. Taking 

thirty-six as the mean, we find that in Russia, with its thin 

population and a climate as healthy as that of Norway and 

,Sweden, the mortality is one hundred per cent, greater than 



54 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

in the latter, and one hundred and twelve per cent, greater 
than in the former of those countries. It is sixty-four per 
cent, greater than in Great Britain, thirty-seven per cent, 
greater than in Germany, and thirty-nine per cent, greater 
than in France. 

According to Dr. Farr, a mortality exceeding seventeen 
per thousand is an abnormal mortality, due to some pre- 
ventable cause. This standard is reached in Norway, and 
approached very nearly in Sweden, and in the rural districts 
of England (where it is eighteen per thousand), and even in 
several large centres of population in the United States. 
In England, whenever the death-rate rises to twenty-three 
per thousand, a medical and sanitary inquiry of the district 
is prescribed by law, this mortality being considered due to 
some preventable cause. It cannot be otherwise in Russia, 
with a death-rate of between 35.4 and 37.3. And it is not 
at all difficult to discover that this preventable cause lies in 
the misery of the unhappy country. The Congress of the 
Society of Russian Surgeons expressed exactly the same 
opinion at their last annual meeting, held on the 18th of 
December, 1885, under the presidency of M. S. P. Botkin, 
body-surgeon to the Emperor. After ascertaining the exact 
death-rate, they expressed the opinion that the primary 
cause of this frightful mortality is deficiency of food (bread). 
It is thus obvious that the reduction of one-seventh in the 
peasants' consumption of bread during the last twenty 
years, as is shown by the computation of corn exports and 
corn production, has not come out of the people's superflui- 
ties, but is literally wrung from their necessities. 

The Congress of Russian Surgeons of December, 1885, 
brought to light some other very suggestive facts. This 
high rate of mortality is not uniform throughout the Em- 
pire ; it is much greater in its central than in its peripheral 
regions. The high birth-rate in Russia, due to the very 
early marriages of our agricultural population, atones in part 



THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 55 

for the devastation produced by untimely deaths. Statistics 
show an average yearly increase of 1.1 per cent, (or about 
1,200,000) in the number of the unfortunate subjects of 
the Czar. But there is no such increase in the central 
provinces, where the population is more dense, and the ruin 
of the masses proceeds with the greatest rapidity. 

In the thirteen provinces — that is to say, the whole of 
Central Russia — the mortality, always on the increase, 
reached when the last census was taken (1882) sixty-two 
per thousand per annum. Nothing approaching this pre- 
vails in any other part of Europe. It would be incredi- 
ble were it not officially attested. The birth-rate in these 
provinces being forty-five (the normal rate for the whole 
Empire), this is equal to a decrease of seventeen per thou- 
sand per year. In the heart of Russia the population is be- 
ing starved out. 

The medical report, moreover, notices that the provinces 
where the mortality is greatest are those where the land pro- 
duces a full supply of bread. The starving out of the peas- 
ants who till it is therefore the work of " art," as I have 
just described, and not of nature. 

Another most suggestive fact which points to the same 
conclusion is that Russia is the only country in the world 
where the mortality over a large area of open country is 
greater than that in the towns. In all countries possessing 
statistical records it is the reverse, the hygienic conditions 
of life and work in the open air being all in favor of the 
rural population. In England, for instance, the mortality 
is 38.8 per cent, higher in towns than in the country ; in 
France, twenty-four per cent. ; and in Sweden, thirty-seven 
per cent. In Prussia the difference is less than in any other 
part of Western Europe — 7.1 per cent.; yet even there it 
is in favor of the villages. In Russia there are fourteen 
provinces, with a population as great as that of the Aus- 
trian Empire, and an area three times as large, in which 



56 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

the death - rate of the villages is higher than that of the 
largest towns. In the villages of the province of Moscow 
the mortality is 33.1 higher than in Moscow city ; in the 
province of St. Petersburg the difference is 17.5 ; in Kazan 
and Kieff, with more than 100,000 inhabitants each, the 
mortality. is less by twenty-seven and thirty per cent, than 
in the villages of their respective provinces.* 

I hardly need to add that such a striking anomaly can in 
no wise be put to the credit of the exceptional perfection of 
the hygienic arrangements of our big cities. The largest, 
the two capitals included, are in this respect much more 
nearly allied to Asiatic than to European towns. 

Another startling fact is, that the official returns relating 
to recruits for the period from 1874 to 1887, published in 
1886 by the central Statistical Board, show that the num- 
ber of able-bodied young men decreases every year with 
appalling regularity. In 1874, when the law of universal 
military service was for the first time put in action, out of 
the total number of young people tested by the recruiting 
commissioners seventy and a half per cent, were accepted 
as able-bodied. The next year showed even a somewhat 
higher rate— seventy-one and a half per cent, of able-bodied. 
But since that date the decrease has gone on uninterrupted- 
ly. It was 69.4 in 1876. Then 69, 68.8, 67.8, 67.7, 65.8, 
59.1, and finally, in 1883, fifty-nine per cent. This means 
a decrease of twelve and a half per cent, in nine years in 
the number of able-bodied people among the flower of the 
nation — that is, the youth of twenty years of age, of whom 
eighty-five and a quarter per cent, come from the peas- 
antry. 

These facts need no comment. They admit of only 
one explanation : hunger and poverty have wrought fearful 
havoc among our rural population. This is the last work 

* Professor Jansan's Statistics,--vol.i.r p. 264. 



THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 57 

t)f our present regime. It is to tlii's we have come aft<ir 
twenty-five years of incessant " progress/' and the worst of 
it all is that under the present regime the work of ruin 
and devastation must go on uninterruptedly, fatally, rather 
increasing in its rapidity than diminishing. 

For what are the chief causes of peasant degradation ? 
Usury on the one hand and taxes on the other. The first 
of these causes, in the material ills which it produces, is by 
far the more powerful and fatal of the two. But the kou- 
Jaks, mir-eaters, and usurers of all sorts would never have been 
able to lay hold of and re-enslave the recently enfranchised 
agrarian population without the aid of the tax-gatherer and 
his satellites. What is it that constrains the peasants to 
sell in September corn which they know they will be in 
desperate need of a few months later on ? The imperious 
necessity of paying their taxes. 

The ideal of each peasant's household is to eat the bread 
from their own fields,, providing for the taxes by out-door 
work or by some home industry. But few are able to 
realize their ideal. The vast majority, as I have already 
shown, sell a considerable proportion of their harvest in Sep- 
tember, only to buy it back in the winter or the spring, 
always losing heavily thereby, because corn is cheap in Sep- 
tember, and from thirty to fifty per cent, dearer in the win- 
ter and spring. Nevertheless they commit each year this 
economical absurdity, which they thoroughly understand. 
They risk hunger, knowing well how hard it is to make 
money in winter. They are aware that in such cases they 
will have no other resource than to "give themselves in 
bondage" to some koulak, or landlord, and fully compre- 
hend how disastrous such a step will be. But a peasant 
always counts on his luck. He thinks he can scrape up a 
little money and thus escape usurers altogether. And even 
when compelled to appeal to their ruinous assistance, the 
peasant lulls his^feara to rest with the hope that some pity- 



58 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

ing fate will at the last moment befriend him. In any 
case, time moves slowly, and ruin is as yet far off. 

From the taxes there is no escape, and the reckoning day 
comes quickly. The administration is very exacting as to 
arrears, for punctuality in collecting taxes constitutes the 
tax-gatherer's best claim for promotion and the approval of 
his superiors. No excuse is admitted. Even in times of 
famine payment of arrears is enforced by the stanovois and 
ispravniks. When there is neither corn nor cattle to seize 
in insolvent villages the police sell houses and storehouses, 
ploughs and harrows, by auction. 

But such drastic measures as these can be resorted to but 
once in each village ; the dispossessed peasants are turned 
into beggars, and can thenceforth pay nothing more. Ad- 
ministrators who are wise prefer other means, which, while 
of considerable efficacy, have no disastrous economical con- 
sequences, and may therefore be repeated every year and 
to any extent. This is flogging. Insolvent peasants are 
flogged in a body, in crowds and alone. To show how 
extensively this forcible administrative method is used in 
modern Russia, I may mention that during the winter of 
1885-86 a tax-inspector of Novgorod province reported that 
in one district alone 1500 peasants were condemned to be 
flogged for non-payment of taxes. Of these 550 had then 
been flogged ; the remainder were awaiting their turn, and 
the charitable inspector interceded with the Ministry to pro- 
cure them a respite. 

It is indeed open to doubt whether even on the old slave- 
owners' estates there was ever so extensive an application of 
the rod as there now is in modern Russia, twenty-five years 
after the Emancipation. 

It will thus be seen that that old ingredient in Russian 
life, the rod, still plays a very important part in the lives of 
the peasants. It is at the bottom of the whole system of 
spoliation, for the tax-collector's rod and nothing else is 



THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 59 

driving the peasantry under the wheels of the despoiler's 
machine, which has for its working or peripheral tools the 
koulaks, mir-eaters, and usurious landlords. 

In the foregoing pages I have described the central or 
directing organs of the same machine, with its complicated 
economical net-work of banks, railways, paper-money, and 
the rest. I have shown, as the reader may remember, that 
the main-spring of this colossal mechanism, and the final 
instrument in the abstraction of corn from the mouths of 
its producers, is the paper -money issued by the Govern- 
ment. Put in febrile motion by the banks, and concen- 
trated in the hands of the corn - merchants, this money 
overflows the country in September, and sweeps away with 
irresistible power the peasants' provision of food. 

Thus both keys to the machine are held by the Govern- 
ment. In both cases its action is subservient to that of the 
capitalists, but in both it works in their favor, giving them 
the necessary power over the objects, or, let us say, the vic- 
tims of their manipulations — the peasants. While lending 
to the capitalists and the higher-class koulaks millions of 
paper-money with one hand, the Government with the other 
hand flogs the peasants into submission to the rural agents 
and representatives of these capitalists — the koulaks, mir- 
eaters, and usurers of every description. 

The terrible machine must and will do its work. With 
the impoverishment of the masses the drastic measures for 
extorting taxes will rather become intensified than subside. 
Havino^ to sustain itself more or less on a level with its 
powerful Western neighbors, the Empire can neither dimin- 
ish its expenditure nor arrest the continual increment of the 
public debt. On the other hand, the more the koulaks and 
mir-eaters succeed in their work of devastation the richer 
they become, and the more are they able to extend their 
operations. They never have any difficulty in finding invest- 
ments for their capital in the villages ; they have no need to 



60 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

seek candidates for loans. On the contrary, each winter as 
the taxes fall due, all these village usurers are besieged with 
suppliants who, imploring their help, submit to every humil- 
iation which a self-satisfied and brutal upstart can inflict, if 
haply they may obtain from him a loan at cent, per cent. 

There is no chance of the havoc being arrested. Even at 
the present day one-third of our formerly independent peas- 
ants are reduced to the state of homeless, down-trodden, beg- 
garly hatrakSf and in thirteen provinces the population is 
literally being starved out at the rate of seventeen per thou- 
sand a year. If no change is brought about, we may affirm 
that in another fifteen years the rate of this descensus Averni 
will be doubled. 

But, the reader may well ask, is there no remedy for thesQ 
heart - sickening horrors? For unless the Opposition can 
bring forth some practical and acceptable proposals of re- 
form, some scheme for ameliorating the deep-rooted evils 
here described, their exposition, though it may deepen the 
shadows and intensify the sorrows of this vale of tears, can 
serve no useful purpose. The question, therefore, is wheth- 
er any of the parties forming the Opposition have brought 
forward some acceptable plan capable of immediate applica- 
tion for the solution of Russian agrarian, which is equal to 
saying social, difficulties. 

Yes, there is such a solution — a solution which has been 
pointed out not by one, but by every section of the Opposi- 
tion, by all the thinking men of the country who have studied 
the question, and, what is more important still, one which is 
supported unanimously, the koulaks alone dissenting, and 
which enjoys the good wishes of the whole of our agrarian 
class. Moreover, the peasants' natural good-sense has sug- 
gested the very same solution of the problem to which men 
of science have been led by their studies. The peasants 
must have the land. From sham owners they must be trans- 
formed into real proprietors, able to Jive by their land, pay 



THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 61 

their taxes, and put something aside for the unforeseen casu- 
alties of agrarian life, and for the gradual improvement of 
the cultivation of the land according to the best methods of 
science and the teachings of Western experience. 

Is Russia sufficiently rich in land to afford the material 
possibility for such a reform ? The question hardly needs 
answering. Less than one-third (twenty-seven per cent.) of 
the land capable of cultivation is held by the peasantry; the 
remaining two-thirds lie as dead capital in the hands of the 
Government or are wasted by the landlords, who either do 
not cultivate it at all, or convert it into an instrument of 
most reckless extortion. The kabala or " bondag^e " culture 
we have just described is the only one which exists or can 
exist on an extensive scale on the landlords' estates in the 
Russia of to-day. Now, though this may be profitable to 
private individuals, it is absolutely ruinous to the commu- 
nity at large. It destroys a hundred times more wealth on 
the side of the peasants than it creates on that of the land- 
lords. Neither are our landlords prospering, as I have shown 
by statistics in an earlier work.* If transferred to the peas- 
ants, this land, or even only a considerable part of it, would 
more than suffice to set them on a firm footing at once, 
without requiring either any particular outlay or any addi- 
tional technical knowledge. 

Every average peasant family can, provided it preserve its 
implements of labor in good repair, and the normal number 
of cattle, cultivate unaided fifty-four acres of land, and can 
earn its own living and pay its taxes with ease. The pre- 
vailing " three fields " system of culture is undoubtedly the 
clumsiest of its kind ; under it only two-thirds of the arable 
land are utilized at a time, the remaining third being kept 
fallow in order to restore its fertility. The average return 
yielded by crops over the whole of Russia is moreover only 

* " Russian Storm Cloud," p. 57. 



62 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

2.9 to one grain sown (excluding the seed). This is almost 
the minimum, below which regular agriculture would hardly 
be possible. But the " three fields " system of rotation is 
the cheapest form of cultivation, requiring a minimum out- 
lay in implements and the smallest quantity of manure, and 
in the fertile regions of black soil no manure at all. It is 
the only system possible at the outset. But our agriculture 
admits of an almost unlimited improvement. " Were the 
Russian (European) fields cultivated as are those of Great 
Britain," says E. Reikis, "Russia would produce, instead of 
six hundred and fifty million hectolitres of corn annually, 
about five milliards, which would be sufficient to feed a 
population of five hundred million souls." * Add to this 
the fact that an enormous residue of land is lavingr in store 
for future generations. In European Russia the cultivated 
land is but twenty-one per cent, of the whole area, while it 
is sixty-one per cent, in Great Britain and eighty-three per 
cent, in France. 

The wealth of Russia in land is enormous, and amply 
sufficient to transform it from a country of beggars into a 
land of plenty. The poverty of its husbandmen, compelled 
to sit on tlieir "cat's plot," while enormous tracts of land 
lie waste around them, is a monstrous crime against nat- 
ure as well as against humanity. A simple reorganization 
of our absurd agrarian system will put an end to this, and 
enable the peasants to start on the work of economical prog- 
ress and emulation. 

The urgency of this reform, the impossibility of going 
on without it, and the universal desire for it are guarantees 
that, were Russia free to assert her will and manage her 
own affairs, it would speedily be realized. But it is evi- 
dent that only a free Russia can and will undertake so 
radical a reform. The decrepit autocracy has neither the 

* " Geographie Uuiverselle," vol. v., p. 859. 



THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 63 

moral strength to risk it nor tlie material means necessary 
for its accomplishment. All the Government has done by 
way of satisfying the despairing cry for more land, and 
of silencing the clamor made about it by the democratic 
part of the press, was the foundation, in May, 1882, of the 
so-called ** peasants' land bank," for facilitating the acquisi- 
tion by peasants of salable land. The means placed at the 
disposal of this bank were, however, so small (only five mill- 
ion rubles a year, while the Government pays to the rail- 
way share-holders alone an annual tribute of forty-six mill- 
ions) that the bank is unable to supply even the yearly 
increase of population with land ; and its statutory arrange- 
ments are such that it can advance money only to those 
who already possess something — the koulaks and groups of 
well-to-do peasants, and not the destitute — thus increasing 
the segregation and concentration of land Into a few hands 
instead of distributing it more widely. Nothing better, in- 
deed, could be expected from our Government. 

But let us suppose, for argument's sake, the Autocrat of 
Russia, head of the privileged of every class-— let us sup- 
pose him transformed into a Czar-Democrat such as some 
foolish narodniks have imagined. I affirm that the most 
radical agrarian reform initiated by him without the aboli- 
tion of the present political organization would be quite 
inadequate to permanently improve the condition of our 
peasantry. 

The mischief already wrought by the present system is 
too deeply seated to be remedied by mere grants of land. 
Many of the peasants, no fewer than twenty millions, are 
unable to cultivate the little land they already possess for 
lack of cattle and implements — that is, in two words, in- 
dustrial capital. After the grant of new land they can nei- 
ther start afresh nor rise to material ease without enjoying 
for a certain time the benefit of cheap credit. Without this 
aid they would have to apply once more to the koulaks, 



64 THE KUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

who would demand their two hundred and three hundred 
per cent., and thus repeat the same process of enslavement 
and spoliation, only on a larger scale than before. 

The reliance placed by our peasants on their collective 
strength, educated as they are in the traditions of their mir 
— together with the remarkable honesty, fairness, and sense 
of duty displayed by these mirs in their dealings when they 
are really independent — greatly facilitate such operations 
as those in question. The union of the peasants of one 
village offers a far greater security than any individual land- 
lord can give, always provided, of course, that the mir has 
real and full control over its affairs. A mir is, moreover, 
a natural and permanent assurance company for all its 
members in case of unforeseen misfortune, acting thus as 
preserver of the otherwise unstable economical equilibrium. 

Under the present regime the mir plays this part only in 
exceptional cases, where the commune is not totally desti- 
tute. It is generally composed of a mass of beggars, who 
cannot afford the assistance they would otherwise give, and 
of a few koulaks and mir-eaters, who sell their help at the 
price I have named. Still less can the modern bureaucratic 
mir be trusted with any money, be the amount great or 
small. 

The modern mir is completely subject to the local police 
and the administration, which allow it the free exercise of 
its powers of self-government only when there is no induce- 
ment for officials to interfere. Whenever any profit is to 
be made, the stanovoi and ispravniks are always at hand, 
using every means in their power, from threats and ear- 
boxing to flogging, to enforce their will. The abuse of au- 
thority on the part of inferior police agents and adminis- 
trators, and their cruel treatment of the helpless peasantry, 
form one of the most sickening and bloody chapters in the 
annals of Russian autocracy. 

The common and unfailing expedient used by these ofH- 



THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 65 

cers for getting their fingers into the pie is to get one of 
their minions nominated to the post of " head-man " {vo- 
lost) and manager of the communal finances — of some "kou- 
lak or mir-eater — who will repay their support by giving 
them a share in the bootv. 

The embezzlement of peasants' money by administrators 
of this stamp goes on as impudently here as in the Czar's 
Government generally. It is certainly practised on a more 
extensive scale in these cases than in the higher walks of 
political life, which are necessarily under better control. 
The illiterate peasants are quite defenceless, and should 
some educated man try to interfere on their behalf he is 
sure to get into serious trouble, for sympathy with the 
peasants is always considered in high circles as identical 
with subversive ideas. Robbery goes on unchecked, hardly 
concealed by even the forms of decency. It not infrequent- 
ly happens that the money paid for taxes is embezzled, the 
peasant in this case being compelled to pay a second time. 
The sums sent by the zemstvos for the relief of the hun- 
gry are embezzled ; the funds advanced for the purchase of 
seed corn are seized ; the very corn which is stored in com- 
munal granaries as a provision for times of scarcity is sto- 
len. Each year brings heaps of such cases to light. All 
that can be plundered is plundered. 

On what ground, then, can we hope that "cheap credit" 
institutions would escape ? We know by experience how 
these so-called " peasants' loans and savings banks " are man- 
aged, which for a time were the hobby of the zemstvos and 
of the liberal officials. They received a considerable de- 
velopment, their capital amounting in 1883 to thirteen mill- 
ion rubles — on paper, at least. To show what these banks 
were I need only quote from the Novoe Vremya, the organ 
of the high-class koulaks, which admitted that " in an enor- 
mous majority of instances the banks benefited the bulk of 
the peasants nothing whatever, having become instruments 
6 



66 THB RUSSIAN PEASANTBY. 

of usury in the hands of rural koulaks and swindlers." 
The managers, communal clerks, koulaks, parish beadles, 
and other rural notabilities "borrowed money from the 
banks to relend at usurious interest to needy peasants." * 

Several revisions, undertaken on some occasions by the 
Governors-general in entire provinces, as for instance in 
those of the eight districts of Tchernigoff province and the 
whole Penza province (1882), have shown that the money 
was principally ** borrowed " by a few persons when the 
banks first started, some ten or twelve years ago, and has 
not yet been refunded. To use plain English, it was sim- 
ply stolen. For formality's sake, a new book was bought 
every January, and the old debtors* names re-entered from 
year to year, as if the amounts standing to their debit had 
been only just advanced. Exactly the same trick was used 
by Rykoff, Youkhanzeff, and other high-class robbers who 
stole millions, a fact which only goes to prove yet once 
again that les beaux esprits se rencontrent. 

Enough of this. From these cursory remarks the reader 
can well realize that the second of the great measures in- 
dispensable for extricating the peasants from the grasp of 
usury — cheap credit — would be a rather risky proceeding 
under the present political regime. 

The third indispensable requirement for rendering the 
acquisition by the people of the material means of work 
of any avail, is the spread of both elementary and profes- 
sional education among the rural classes. A large and wide 
diffusion of knowledge among them would increase tenfold 
the productiveness of labor, and open out an unlimited field 
for further progress in its social and economical life. But 
here, once more, we stumble against the autocracy, which 
cannot tolerate the idea of an educated peasantry, and which 
does not recoil from the most barefaced obstructions and 

* Novoe Vreniya^ No. 2532. 



THE RtrSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 67 

shameful subterfuges for hindering the diffusion of primary 
education, impeding the foundation of new schools, and 
blocking the wheels of the old ones. 

To conclude. There is a means for extricating our peo- 
ple from the dead-lock to which Russia has been brought ; 
but it implies as a conditio sine qua non the abolition of 
the bureaucratic despotism and the transformation of the 
autocratic Empire into a free constitutional State of the 
European type. Of all the series of measures which only 
in their totality would suffice to reduce to order the pres- 
ent economical, social, and political chaos, not one can be 
adopted by the existing regime. Each implies or necessi- 
tates the breaking up of the present system. And every 
step taken for the redemption of the masses involves danger 
to the supremacy of the Czar and his satellites. 

Our Government, caring above all things for its own 
interests and privileges, and putting all else in the back- 
ground, acts according to the dictates of the grossest self- 
ishness. It did not object to reforms in favor of the peas- 
ants so long as the reforms could be effected at the expense 
of the serf-owning nobility. This was very wise and per- 
spicacious, and for a time won the Emperor Alexander 11. 
great popularity, even among extreme Radicals and Social- 
ists. But from the moment when this was found insuflS- 
cient, and a demand was made for the cessation of absolute 
power, the Government made up its mind and took the 
opposite course. 

The whole home policy of the two last reigns since the 
Emancipation is nothing but a constant fostering of the 
interests of the privileged classes at the expense of the 
masses. Hundreds of millions — milliards — of money ex- 
acted from the peasants are spent in " supporting the no- 
bility " or the " landlords," or in subsidizing great manu- 
facturers. For the sake of augmenting the profits of the 
favored trades, prohibitive tariffs arc levied, wars of con- 



68 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY* 

quest are undertaken, and conquered provinces cut off by 
cordons of custom-houses of the interior. And when, in 
1871, the more enlightened and liberal part of the privi- 
leged classes — the zemstvos of all the thirty-four provinces 
where the zemstvos existed — unanimously condemned the 
injustice of the present fiscal system and petitioned for the 
introduction of a progressive income-tax, equitable for all, 
the Czar Alexander XL pronounced the measure to be too 
democratic and subversive — too likely to injure and alien- 
ate the koulaks, the usurers, the sharpers, and the swindlers 
of every sort. In its selfish fear autocracy appeals to the 
worst instincts and the basest elements of human nature, 
for selfishness and greed are its best support. 

Connivance is secured by dividing the booty, and at- 
tempts to improve the condition of the masses are regard- 
ed as acts of overt sedition. They are opposed by the 
combined forces of the censorship of the Press and the 
police. The people's friends are not even allowed to de- 
nounce the horrors which are passing under their eyes. 
The democratic monthlies, such as the Annales, the SlovOy 
and the DielOy are suppressed under the pretext that they 
are organs of " revolution " — a nonsensical accusation 
against periodicals that had been published for fifteen or 
eighteen years in the Czar's capital. Their real offence 
was that they made the investigation of the condition of 
our peasantry the chief object of their efforts, and contin- 
ually held the light of truth and science over this abyss of 
popular suffering. 

Whenever some fact or some rumor brings the agrari- 
an question forcibly before the public, the Press invaria- 
bly receives secret orders, like those of June 12, 1881, and 
June 26, 1882, forbidding, "in order not to excite public 
opinion," the publication of anything referring to the sen- 
sational affair of Count Bobrinsky and Prince Scherbatoff, 
showing such an amount of cruelty, cheating, and malver- 



THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 69 

sation on the part of these gentlemen towards the peasan- 
try as to be exceptional and revolting even for Russia. Or 
the orders are more sweeping, as on March 17, 1882 : "It 
is absolutely forbidden to publish anything referring to the 
rumors going on among peasants as to the redistribution of 
land, as well as articles alleging the necessity or the justice 
of making any alteration in the agrarian condition of the 
peasants." Or on September 18, 1885: "Forbidding ab- 
solutely the commemoration in any form of the coming 
(February 19, 1886) twenty-fifth anniversary of the eman- 
cipation of the peasants," lest some allusion to their pres- 
ent evil plight might perchance escape the speakers. 

This is our position. It is not the Imperial Government 
that materially or purposely ruins the peasants, which is 
equivalent to saying the nation ; but the Government, out 
of regard for its mere selfish interests, purposely and delib- 
erately supports and assists those who are ruining it, while 
for the same reason suppressing every infiuence and force 
likely to produce a different result. The Government of 
the two Alexanders is, therefore, fully and entirely respon- 
sible for the present sufferings of the Russian masses. 
This is the chief, the most terrible and overwhelming count 
in the indictment against our Government. 

Great are the wrongs, bitter the abuses and sufferings 
inflicted by this despotism on the whole of educated Rus- 
sia — arbitrary arrests, detentions, exiles without any trial 
whatever, the trampling down of all sacred human rights, 
suppression of freedom of speech and of the Press, violation 
of the hearth and prevention of the right to work, whereby 
the lives of thousands of intelligent, well-intentioned, and 
innocent men and women are either wasted or made mis- 
erable. But what are their sufferings compared with those 
of the dumb millions of our peasantry ? What an ocean 
of sorrow, tears, despair, and degradation is reflected in 
these dry figures, which prove that households have by 



^JQ THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

hundreds of thousands been forced to sell by auction all 
their poor possessions ; that millions of peasants who were 
at one time independent have been turned into batraks, 
driven from their homes, have had their families destroyed, 
their children sold into bondage, and their daughters given 
to prostitution ; and untold numbers of full - grown, nay 
even gray-haired, respectable laborers have been shamefully 
flogged to extort taxes. Then think on these frightful fig- 
ures of mortality — sixty-two a year per thousand in thir- 
teen provinces. This means nothing less than half a mill- 
ion a year virtually dying of hunger, starved to death in a 
twelvemonth, with the probability that before long the 
proportion will be doubled. 

Verily, it is here, and not so much in the cruelties in- 
flicted on political offenders, that we must look for the 
cause of the fierce, implacable hatred of the revolutionists 
against their Government. 

Herein lies the peremptory cause, the permanent stimu- 
lant and the highest justification of the Russian revolution 
and of Russian conspiracies. Life is not worth living when 
your eyes constantly behold such miseries as these inflicted 
on a people whom you love. It would be a shame to bear 
the name of a Russian had these unutterable sufferings of 
the masses called forth no responsive and boundless devo- 
tion to the people's cause ; a devotion which glows in the 
hearts of all those thousands of Russia's sons and daughters 
who risk life, freedom, domestic happiness — all which is 
most dear to our common nature — in the effort to free their 
country from a government which is the main-spring of all 
these woes. 

But, we are sometimes told, the Nihilists have no right to 
set themselves up as champions of the peasants against the au- 
tocracy, for the rural masses are loyal and devoted to the Czar. 

If to label aspirations which, in their very essence, are 
hostile to the Czardom with the name of the Czar can in 



THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 71 

truth be called loyalty, why then a vast majority of our 
peasants are most assuredly very loyal indeed. In this 
case, however, it is strange that the Imperial Government 
and the Czar himself place so little trust in this loyalty as 
to tremble at the thought of putting it to the test. The 
prospect of perpetual Nihilist attempts, which make the 
present life of the Gatschina prisoner a burden and the 
future a terror, seem to the Government preferable to the 
chances of a popular vote. For have not the Nihilists re- 
peatedly declared that they would desist from hostilities 
towards their paternal government from the first moment 
that it obtained the sanction of the freely expressed voice 
of the people ? 

The fact is that the peasants are as dissatisfied with the 
working of the present institutions as the Nihilists them- 
selves — certainly more dissatisfied than are the educated 
and privileged classes as a whole. And the reader will cer- 
tainly admit that for this discontent they have ample cause. 
The only difference between the middle class opposition and 
the peasantry is, that the peasantry think the autocracy has 
no share whatever in bringing on them the calamities from 
which they suffer, and that the Czar is as much dissatisfied 
as the peasants themselves with the present order of things, 
which they attribute to the wickedness and cunning of the 
" nobility." It is doubtful whether the peasants will stick 
forever, or for long, to this nonsensical idea. But I frank- 
ly confess that, even as matters now stand, I take a totally 
different view as to this would-be sanction. I think that if 
there be anything which deprives our Government of all 
claim to respect ; if there be anything which can lower it 
in the eyes of mankind, and which will remain as a stain 
on its escutcheon for evermore, it is just the foul perfidy 
involved in the abuse of this touching, child-like confidence 
reposed in it by the simple-hearted millions of our Russian 
peasantry. 



THE MOUJIKS AND THE RUSSIAN 
DEMOCRACY. 



CHAPTER I. 

When, about a score of years before the Emancipation, 
the Russian democrats for the first time came into close 
contact with the peasants, with the view of becoming bet- 
ter acquainted with their down-trodden brothers, they were 
amazed at their discoveries. The moujiks proved to be an 
entirely different race from what pitying people among 
their *' elder brothers " expected them to be. 

Far from being degraded and brutalized by slavery, the 
peasants, united in their semi -patriarchal, semi -republican 
village communes, exhibited a great share of self-respect, 
and even capacity to stand boldly by their rights, where 
the whole of the commune was concerned. Diffident in 
their dealings with strangers, they showed a remarkable 
truthfulness and frankness in their dealings among them- 
selves, and a sense of duty and loyalty and unselfish devo- 
tion to their little communes, which contrasted strikingly 
with the shameful corruption and depravity of the official 
classes. 

They had not the slightest notion of the progress made 
by the sciences, and believed that the earth rested on three 
whales, swimming on the ocean ; but in their traditional 
morality they sometimes showed such deep humanity and 



THE MOUJIKS AND THE RUSSIAN DEMOCRACY. 73 

wisdom as to strike their educated observers with wonder 
and admiration. 

These pioneer democrats, men of great talent and enor- 
mous erudition, such as Yakushkin, Dal, and Kireevsky, in 
propagating among the bulk of the reading public the re- 
sults of their long years of study, laid the base of that 
democratic feeling which has never since died out in 
Russia. 

From that time forth the momentous rush of the edu- 
cated people "among the peasants," and the study of the 
various sides of peasant life, has been constantly on the in- 
crease. No country possesses such a literature on the sub- 
ject as Russia ; but the tone of the writers of these latter 
times — men of the same stamp as Yakushkin and Kireev- 
sky — is no longer that of unmixed admiration. Whether 
you embark on the sea of statistical and ethnographical lore 
collected for posterity by the untiring zeal of the late Or- 
loff and his followers, or whether you are lost in admira- 
tion of the artistic sketches of peasant life drawn by Us- 
pensky, or whether you are perusing the works of no less 
trustworthy though less gifted essayists of the same school, 
such as Zlatovratsky and Zassodimsky, you will invariably 
be brought to recognize a great breaking up of the tradi- 
tional groundwork of the social and moral life of our peas- 
antry. 

Something harsh, cruel, cynically egotistical, is worming 
itself into the hearts of the Russian agricultural population, 
where formerly all was simplicity, peace, and good-will unto 
men. Thus the gray-bearded grandfathers are not alone in 
modern Russia in lamenting the good old times. Some of 
our young and popular writers are, strangely enough, strik- 
ing the same wailing chords. It is evident that in the ter- 
rible straits through which bur people are passing, not only 
their material condition but their very souls have suffered 
grave injuries. 



74 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

Yet it is not all lamentation about the past in the tidings 
which reach us from our villages. The good produced by 
the progress of culture is, in spite of its drawbacks, accord- 
ing to our modest opinion, full compensation for the im- 
pairing of the almost unconscious virtues of the old patri- 
archal period. 

Freed from the yoke of serfdom, and put before the 
tribunals on an equal footing with other citizens, their 
former masters included, the peasants too are beginning 
to feel themselves to be citizens. A new generation, which 
has not known slavery, has had time to grow up. Their 
aspiration after independence has not as yet directed itself 
against political despotism, save in isolated cases ; but in 
the mean time it has almost triumphed in the struggle 
against the more intimate and trying domestic despotism 
of the bolshak, the head of the household. A very impor- 
tant and thoroughgoing change has taken place in the fami- 
ly relations of the great Russian rural population. The chil- 
dren, as soon as they are grown up and have married, will no 
longer submit to the balshak's whimsical rule. They rebel, 
and if imposed upon separate and found new households, 
where they become masters of their own actions. These 
separations have grown so frequent that the number of in- 
dependent households in the period from 1858-1881 in- 
creased from thirty-two per cent, to seventy-one per cent, 
of the whole provincial population. 

It is worthy of remark that the rebellion among the 
educated classes also first began in the circle of domestic 
life, before stepping into the larger arena of political action. 

Elementary education, however hampered and obstructed 
by the Government, is spreading among the rural classes. 
In 1868, of a hundred recruits of peasant origin there were 
only eight who could read and write. In 1882 the pro- 
portion of literate people among the same number was 
twenty. This is little compared with what might have been 



THE MOUJIKS AND THB RUSSIAN DEMOCRACY. '?5. 

done, but it is a great success if we remember the hinder- 
ances the peasant has had to overcome. 

Reading, which a score of years ago was confined ex- 
chisively to the upper classes, is now spreading among the 
moujiks. Popular literature of all kinds has received an 
unprecedented development in the last ten or fifteen years. 
Popular books run through dozens of editions, and are sell- 
ing by scores of thousands of copies. 

Religion is the language in which the human spirit lisps 
its first conceptions of right and gives vent to its first aspi- 
rations. The awakening of the popular intelligence and 
moral consciousness has found its expression in dozens of 
new religious sects, a remarkable and suggestive phenome- 
non of modern popular life in Russia. Differing entirely 
from the old ritualistic sectarianism, which was more of 
a rebellion against ecclesiastical arrangements than against 
orthodoxy, these new sects of rationalistic and Protestant 
type have acquired in about ten or twelve years hundreds 
of thousands, nay millions, of proselytes. 

This movement of thought, both by its exaltation and 
the general tendency of its doctrines, can be compared with 
the great Protestant movement of the sixteenth century. 
The only difference consists in its being confined in Russia 
exclusively to the rural and working classes, without being 
in the least shared by the educated people. The sources 
of religious enthusiasm are dried up, we think forever, in 
the Russian intellectual classes, their enthusiasm and exal- 
tation having found quite another vent; for nobody can 
seriously consider the few drawing-room attempts to found 
some new creed, of which we have now and then heard of 
late. But it is beyond doubt that the genuine and earnest 
development of religious thoughts and feelings which we 
are witnessing among our masses will play an important 
part in our people's near future. 

In whatever direction we look, everything proves that 



76 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

under the apparent calm there is a great movement in the 
minds of our rural population. The great social and po- 
litical crisis through which Russia is passing is not con- 
fined to the upper classes alone. The process of demoli- 
tion, slower but vaster, is going on among the masses too. 
There all is tottering to its fall — orthodoxy, custom, tra- 
ditional forms of life. The European public only takes 
notice of the upper stratum of the crisis, of that which is 
going on among the educated, because of its dramatic mani- 
festations ; but the crisis among our agricultural classes, 
wrought by the combined efforts of civilization on the one 
hand and of economical ruin on the other, is no less real, 
and certainly no less interesting and worthy of study than 
the former. 

In what does this crisis consist ? How far and in what 
direction have the changes in the social and ethical ideals, 
the traditional morality and the character of the moujik, 
the tiller and guardian of our native land, gone ? It would 
seem presumption to answer, or even to attempt to answer 
in the space of a few pages, such questions in reference to 
an enormous rural population like the Russian. I hasten, 
therefore, to mention one thing which renders such an at- 
tempt, partial at least, justifiable. 

A Russian moujik presents, of course, as many varieties as 
there are tribes and regions in the vast Empire. There is a 
wide difference between the peculiarly sociable, open-hearted 
Great Russian peasant, brisk in mind and speech, quick to 
love and quick to forget, and the dreamy and reserved 
Ruthenian; or between the practical, extremely versatile 
and independent Siberian, who never knew slavery, and the 
timid Beloruss (White Russian), who has borne three yokes. 
But through all the varieties of types, tribes, and past 
history, the millions of our rural population present a re- 
markable uniformity in those higher general, ethical, and 
social conceptions which the educated draw from divers 



THE MOUJIKS AND THE RUSSIAN DEMOCRACY. 77 

social and political sciences, and the uneducated from their 
traditions, which are the depositories of the collective wis- 
dom of past generations. 

This seemingly strange uniformity in our peasants' moral 
physiognomy is to be accounted for by two causes: the 
perfect identity of our people's daily occupation, which is 
almost exclusively pure husbandry, and the great similitude 
of those peculiar self-governing associations, village com- 
munes, in which the whole of our rural population, without 
distinction of tribe or place, have lived from time imme- 
morial. 

No occupation is fitter to develop a morally as well as 
physically healthy race than husbandry. We mean genuine 
husbandry, where the tiller of the soil is at the same time 
its owner. We need not dwell on the proofs. Poets, his- 
torians, and philosophers alike have done their best to bring 
home to us, corrupted children of the towns, the charms 
of the simple virtues which hold sway amid the popula- 
tions of stanch ploughmen. 

In Russia, until the " economic progress " of the last 
twenty -five years turned twenty millions of our peasants 
into landless proletarians, they were all land-owners. Even 
the scourge of serfdom could not depose them from that 
dignity. The serfs, who gratuitously tilled the manorial 
land, had each of them pieces of freehold land which they 
cultivated on their own account. Nominally it was the 
property of the landlords. But so strong was tradition and 
custom that the landlords themselves had almost forgotten 
that they had a right to it. So much was this the case 
that Professor Engelhardt* tells us that many of the former 
seigneurs only learned from the Act of Emancipation of 
1861 that the land on which the peasants dwelt also be- 
longed to them. 



* " Letters from a Village." 



V8 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

Gleb Uspensky, in discussing the causes of the wonder- 
ful preservation of the purity of the moral character of the 
Russian people through such a terrible ordeal as three cen- 
turies of slavery, which passed over without ingrafting into 
it any of the vice of slavery, can find no other explanation 
than this : the peasant was never separated from the plough- 
share, from the all-absorbing cares and the poetry of agri- 
cultural work. 

Our peasants could, however, do something more than 
preserve their individuality. They could give a more last- 
ing proof and testimony as to their collective dispositions 
and aspirations. A Russian village has never been a mere 
aggregation of individuals, but a very intimate association, 
havinor much work and life in common. These associations 
are called mirs among the Great and White Russians, hro- 
madas among the Ruthenians. 

Up to the present time the law has allowed them a con- 
siderable amount of self-government. They are free to 
manage all their economical concerns in common : the land, 
if they hold it as common property — which is the case 
everywhere save in the Ruthenian provinces — the forests, 
the fisheries, the renting of public-houses standing on their 
territory, etc. They distribute among themselves as they 
choose the taxes falling to the share of the commune ac- 
cording to the Government schedules. They elect the rural 
executive administration — Starost and Starshinas — who are 
(nominally at least) under their permanent control. 

Another very important privilege which they possess is 
that they, the village communes composing the Volost, in 
general meeting assembled, elect the ten judges of the Vo- 
lost. All these must be peasants, members of some village 
commune. The jurisdiction of the peasants' tribunal is very 
extensive ; all the civil, and a good many criminal offences 
(save the capital ones), in which one of the parties at least 
is a peasant of the district, are amenable to it. The peas- 



THE MOUJIKS AND THE RUSSIAN DEMOCRACY. 79 

ants sitting as judges are not bound to abide in their ver- 
dicts by the official code of law. They administer justice 
according to the customary laws and traditions of the local 
peasantry. 

The records of these tribunals, published by an official 
commission, at once afford us an insight into the peasants' 
original notions as to juridical questions. We pass over the 
verdicts illustrating the popular idea as to land tenure, 
which is more or less known. We will rather try to elicit 
the other side of the question — the peasants' views on mov- 
able property, the right of bequest, of inheritance, and their 
civil code in general, which presents some curious and un- 
expected peculiarities. 

The fact which strikes us most in it is, that among the 
peasants where the patriarchal principle is as yet so strong 
and the ties of blood are held so sacred, kinship gives no 
right to property. The only rightful claim to it is given 
by work. Whenever the two interests clash, it is to the 
right of labor that the popular conscience gives the prefer- 
ence. The father cannot disinherit one son or diminish his 
share for the benefit of his favorite. Notwithstanding the 
religious respect in which the last will of a dying man is 
held, both the mir and the tribunal will annul it at the 
complaint of the wronged man, if the latter is known to 
be a good and diligent worker. The fathers themselves 
know this well. Whenever they attempt to prejudice one 
of their children in their wills they always adduce as motive 
that he has been a sluggard or a spendthrift and has al- 
ready dissipated his share. The favorite, on the other hand, 
is mentioned as " having worked hard for the family." 

Kinship has no influence whatever in the distribution 
and proportioning of shares at any division of property. 
It is determined by the quantity of work each has given to 
the family. The brother who has lived and worked with 
the family for the longer time will receive most, no matter 



80 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

whether he be the elder or the younger. He will be ex- 
cluded from the inheritance altogether if he has been liv- 
ing somewhere else and has not contributed in some way 
to the common expenses. The same principle is observed in 
settling the differences between the other grades of kinsfolk. 
The cases of sons-in-law, step-sons, and adopted children are 
very characteristic. If they have remained a suflScient time 
— ten or more years — with the family, they receive, though 
strangers, all the rights of legitimate children, while the legit^ 
imate son is excluded if he have not taken part in the com- 
mon work. 

This is in flagrant contradiction of the civil code of Rus- 
sia, as well as of other European countries. The same con- 
tradiction is observable in the question of women's rights. 
The Russian law entitles women — legitimate wives and 
daughters — to one-fourteenth only of the family inheritance. 
The peasants' customary law requires no such limitation. 
The women are in all respects dealt with on an equal foot- 
ing with the men. They share in the property in propor- 
tion to their share in the work. Sisters, as a rule, do not 
inherit from brothers, because in marrying they go to an- 
other family, and take with them as dowry the reward of 
their domestic work. But a spinster sister, or a widow who 
returns to live with her brothers, will always receive or ob- 
tain from the tribunal her share. ♦ 

The right to inheritance being founded on work alone, 
no distinction is made by the peasants' customary law be- 
tween legitimate wives and concubines. 

It is interesting to note that the husband, too, inherits 
the wife's property (if she has brought him any) only when 
they have lived together sufficiently long — above ten year* ; 
otherwise the deceased wife's property is returned to her 
parents. 

The principle ruling the order of inheritance is evidently 
the basis for the verdicts in all sorts of litigation. Labor 



THE MOUJIKS AND THE RUSSIAN DEMOCRACY. 81 

is always recognized as giving an indefeasible right to prop- 
erty. According to common jurisprudence, if one man has 
sown a field belonging to another — especially if he has done 
it knowingly — the court of justice will unhesitatingly deny 
the offender any right to the eventual product. Our peas- 
ants are as strict in their observance of boundaries, when 
once traced, as are any other agricultural folk. But labor 
has its imprescriptible rights. The customary law pre- 
scribes a remuneration for the work executed in both of 
the above-mentioned cases — in the case of unintentional as 
well as in the case of premeditated violation of property. 
Only, in the first instance, the offender, who retains all the 
product, is simply compelled to pay to the owner the rent 
of the piece of land he has sown, according to current 
prices, with some trifling additional present ; while in the 
case of violation knowingly done the product is left to the 
owner of the land, who is bound, nevertheless, to return to 
the offender the seed, and to pay him a laborer's wages for 
the work he has done. 

If a peasant has cut wood in a forest belonging to anoth- 
er peasant, the tribunal settles the matter in a similar way. 
In all these cases the common law would have been wholly 
against the offender, the abstract right of property reigning 
supreme. 

In the vast practice of the many thousands of peasants' 
tribunals, there are certainly instances of verdicts being 
given on other principles than these, or contrary to any 
principle whatever. Remembering the very numerous in- 
fluences to which a modern village is subjected in these 
critical times, it would have been surprising were it other- 
wise. Moreover, the peasants' tribunal has by its side the 
pisar, the communal clerk, a stranger to the village and 
its customs. This important person is the champion and 
propagator of oflScial views and of the official code. Ilis 
influence on the decisions of the peasants' courts is con- 
6 



82 THE EUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

siderable, as is well known. The rarity of the exceptions, 
however, makes the rule the more salient. 

The peasants have applied their collective intelligence not 
to material questions alone, nor within the domain appor- 
tioned to them by law. The mir recognizes no restraint 
on its autonomy. In the opinion of the peasants them- 
selves the mir's authority embraces, indeed, all domains 
and branches of peasant life. Unless the police and the 
local oflScers are at hand to prevent what is considered an 
abuse of power, the peasants' mir is always likely to ex- 
ceed its authority. 

Here is a curious illustration. In the autumn of 1884, 
according to the Russian Courier of the 12th November, 
1884, a peasant's mir in the district of Radomysl had to pro- 
nounce upon the following delicate petition : One of their 

fellow-villagers, Theodor P , whose wife had run away 

from him several years before, and who was living as house- 
maid in some private house, wanted to marry another wom- 
an from a neighboring village. He accordingly asked the 
mir to accept his bride as a female member of their com- 
mune. Having heard and discussed this original demand, 
the mir unanimously passed the following resolution : 

" Taking into consideration that the peasant Theodor P , 

living for several years without his legitimate wife by the 
fault of the latter, is now in great need of a woman [!], his 
marriage with the former wife is dissolved. In accordance 
with which, after being thrice questioned by the elder 
[mayor] of our village as to whether we will permit Theo- 
dor P- to receive into his house as wife the peasant 

woman N , we give our full consent thereto. And if, 

moreover, Theodor P shall have children, by his sec- 
ond wife we will recognize them as legitimate and as heirs 
to their father's property, the freehold and the communal 
land included." 



THE MOUJIKS AND THE RUSSIAN DEMOCKACY. 83 

This resolution, duly put on paper and signed by all 
the householders and by the elder of the village, was 
delivered as certificate of marriage to the happy couple, 
no one suspecting that the rair had overstepped its 
power. 

In the olden times, as late as the sixteenth century, 
it was the mir who elected the parson (as the dissenting 
villages are doing nowadays), the bishops only imposing 
hands on the mir's nominees. The orthodox peasants have 
quite forgotten this historical right of theirs ; but the nat- 
ural right of the mir allows it to deal even with subjects 
referring to religion. 

The conversion to dissenting creeds of whole villages in 
a lump is of very common occurrence in the history of 
modern sects. A dissenting preacher comes to a village 
and makes a few converts. For a time they zealously 
preach their doctrines to their fellow - villagers. Then, 
when they consider the harvest ripe, they bring the matter 
before the mir, and often that assembly, after discussing 
the question, passes a resolution in favor of the acceptance 
of the new creed. The whole village turns " shaloput " or 
" evangelical," changing creeds as small states did in the 
times of the Reformation. 

To a Russian peasant it seems the most natural thing in 
the world that the mir should do this whenever it chooses. 
In my wanderings among the peasants I remember having 
met, near Riazan, with a peasant who amused me much by 
telling how they succeeded in putting a check on the cu- 
pidity and extortion of the pop of their village.. " When 
we could no longer bear it we assembled and said to him, 
* Take care, hatha [father] ; if you won't be reasonable, we, 
all the mir, will give up orthodoxy altogether, and will 
elect a pop from among ourselves.' " And the pop then 
became " tender as silk," for he knew his flock would not 
hesitate to put their threat into effect. 



84 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

The mir forms indeed a microcosm, a small world of its 
own. The people living in it Lave to exercise their judg- 
ment on everything, on the moral side of man's life as on 
the material, shaping it so as to afford to their small com- 
munities as much peace and happiness as is possible under 
their very arduous circumstances. 

Have these uneducated people been able to achieve any- 
thing in the high domain of public morality ? 

Yes, they have, though what they have done cannot be 
registered in volumes like the verdicts of their tribunals. 
They have maintained through centuries and improved the 
old Russian principle of governing without oppression. 
To settle all public questions by unanimous vote, never by 
mere majority, is a wise rule for a body of people living 
on such close terms. This system, however, could only be 
rendered practicable among people of all sorts of tempers 
and diverse moral qualities by a high development of the 
sentiments of justice, equanimity, and conciliation. 

Our peasants lay no claim to being a race of Arcadian 
pastors. Their present and their past alike has been and 
still is too hard to make it possible for them ever to forget 
that charity begins at home. In the bitter struggle for a 
bare existence which they have had to sustain, each has 
had to consider his own skin first. In their every-day life 
and intercourse they are as egotistical as any other set of 
people, each man trying to make the best of his opportu- 
nities. " Each for himself," say they — " but God and the 
mir for all." The mir is no egotist ; it pities everybody 
alike, and should it have to settle any difference it docs not 
look to the numerical strength or respective influence of 
the contending parties, but to the absolute justice of the 
cause. 

But is not the mir composed of the self-same individuals 
who, outside of its charmed circle, are pursuing each his 
personal ends and interests? If they are able to forget 



THE MOUJIKS AND THE RUSSIAN DEMOCKACY. 85 

themselves when at the mir, and can elevate their minds 
and hearts to the exercise of perfect justice and impartial- 
ity, they must also be equal to doing the same outside of 
the mir, in those solemn moments when daily cares and 
anxieties are cast on one side and their higher nature has 
free play. The mir's morality gives its tone to, and shapes 
according to its image, the morality of the individual too. 

Hence that wide tolerance which characterizes our peas- 
ants ; that somewhat gregarious benevolence embracing all 
men, ahnost to the prejudice of intensity of personal at- 
tachment, but which exckides nobody from its pale. The 
Russian moujik is proverbially benevolent towards strangers 
of his own race. He is accustomed to feel something like 
family attachment to most, or to very many of the mem- 
bers of his mir. It is easy for him to admit a new member 
into so large a family. When difference of religion and of 
language does not allow of the full benefit of adoption, he 
will still recognize in the stranger a man like himself. 

There are no people on the face of the earth who treat 
aliens so kindly as do the Russian moujiks. They live 
peacefully side by side with hundreds of tribes, differing in 
race and religion — Tartars, Circassians, Bouriats, and Ger- 
man colonists.* During the last Turkish war, while the 
burghers and the shop - boys of the towns were casting 
stones and mud at the poor Turkish prisoners of war, as 
they passed along the streets until the police had to inter- 
vene, the moujiks offered them bread and coppers, and in 
some cases even took them home to their villages as paid 
laborers. They were greatly perplexed, it is true, as to 
whether they could invite them to share their meals, being 
"infidels," but they generally ended by conquering their 
prejudices; and they, the representatives of two belliger- 

* The outburst against the Jews sprang from economical causes, 
and not from racial antipathy. 



86 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

ent nations, might be seen amicably eating at the same 
table.* 

The mir in the management of its affairs recognizes no 
permanent laws restricting or guiding its decisions. It is 
the personification of the living law, speaking through the 
collective voice of the commune. Every case brought be- 
fore the mir is judged on its own merits, according to the 
endless variety of its peculiar circumstances. In foreign 
lands, too, the laws tacitly acknowledge the necessity for 
making a considerable allowance for the voice of pure con- 
science in the more delicate questions of society — -as to the 
culpability or innocence of its members. But by the side 
of the jury sits the judge, the representative of the written 
law, one of whose duties it is to control and keep them 
within their strictly defined limits — i.e., to the mere verdict 
as to the facts of the case. With a Russian mir the law is 
nowhere, the " conscience " everywhere. Not merely crimi- 
nal offences, but every disputed point is settled accord- 
ing to the individual justice of the case, no regard being 
paid to the category of crime to which it may chance to 
belong. 

These villagers have to deal with living men whom they 
know and love, and it is deeply repugnant to them to over- 
shoot the mark by so much as a hair's-breadth for the sake 
of a dead abstraction — the law. 

This bent of mind is not confined to the peasantry — it is 
national. 

I have frequently observed, and I believe that all who 
have given any attention to the subject will agree with me, 
that the abstract idea of *' law," as a something which is to 
be obeyed to the letter under all circumstances, even when 
the peculiar circumstances of a case make it unjust, is 

* Flato and Ratsey. 



THE MOUJIKS AND THE RUSSIAN DEMOCRACY. 87 

grasped With the greatest diflScultj, even by the most cult- 
ured Russians. 

There are few among our countrymen who will not give 
the preference to the dictates of conscience tempered by a 
fair and impartial mind. They are in this respect a perfect 
contrast to the people of English origin. In our great 
poet Pushkin this feeling was so strong as to make him an 
upholder of the principle of absolute monarchy. " Why," 
he said, " is it necessary that one of us should be put above 
all the rest, and even above the laws ? Because the law is 
a wooden thing. In the law the man feels something hard, 
unbrotherly. With a literal application of the law you 
cannot do much. But at the same time nobody may take 
upon himself to transgress or disregard the law. Hence it 
is necessary that there should be a supreme clemency to 
temper the laws, and this can only be embodied in the au- 
tocratic monarch." 

Out of respect to the memory of our great national 
teacher of art, I will not here discuss the antiquated con- 
ception of a monarch as a dispenser of justice, and not as 
an administrator, bound to know all, to see all, to. under- 
stand all, under penalty of being befooled and made a tool 
of at every turn. I simply mention it as a good illustration 
of the peculiar bent of the Russian mind. 

Much of this is to be ascribed to the lack of political 
education, and to the feeble development of the proud and 
powerful sense of individuality which is the one quality we 
most envy our Western neighbors. To a truly independent 
man even a hard law, because abstract and dispassionate, 
and known to him beforehand, is a better thing than the 
most benignant despotism. That which is the most abhor- 
rent to him is the sense that he is dependent on the good 
pleasure of another — be it the benevolent despotism of one 
master or even the still more benevolent despotism of a 
friendly crowd. 



88 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

Nevertheless we must not forget that on the other hand 
we have been spared the habit of not looking or caring to 
look beyond the mere legal aspect and established rule as to 
human conduct. 

In constantly striving after individual justice, both in 
practice, as with the peasants, and in theory, as with the 
educated classes, our people have not been able to rest sat- 
isfied with mere appearances, nor to consider the question 
solved as soon as they discovered under which section of 
the criminal or any other code the trespass fell. They 
have had to look into the very innermost recesses of the 
human heart, to discover all its hidden promptings, and to 
subject them to an impartial, dispassionate examination, all 
which must needs have educated our people in a spirit of 
the highest tolerance. " To understand everything is to for- 
give everything " is the deepest of human sayings. 

Hence that *'pity for all" which extends, not merely to 
the weak, but to the fallen, to the degraded, to the outcast. 
Just observe how our moujiks behave towards criminals. 
All, without distinction, are designated under the generic 
term of " unhappy," and are treated as such. No contempt, 
no harshness can be detected in the demeanor of the crowd 
of peasants who meet, bearing alms in their hands, a body 
of convicts being escorted to Siberia. They know that 
many of them must be innocent of any real offence. But 
there is something deeper than this in their humanity. 
Gogol, who excelled all other writers in the insight he pos- 
sessed as to the workings of the Russian mind, observes 
that, " of all nations the Russian alone is convinced that 
there exists no man who is absolutely guilty, as there exists 
no man who is absolutely innocent." Is it not this same 
idea which permeates Dostoievsky's masterpiece, " Buried 
Alive?" Is not this "pity for all" apparent throughout 
the works of all our great masters, from Gogol to Gonciaroff 
and Ostrovsky ? Herein lies yet one more proof that in the 



THE MOUJIKS AND THE RUSSIAN DEMOCRACY. 89 

moral qualities of the two extreme sections of the Russian 
nation — the peasantry, who are at the bottom of the social 
scale, and the educated, who are at the top — there are 
some striking resemblances which cannot be purely acci- 
dental. 

Many foreign writers have been struck by the peculiar 
ardor which animates the Russians of all classes in their 
devotion to their country. 

Well, I do not know whether this is due to the emotional 
character of our people, or whether it is merely a reflection 
of what is intensely developed under another name within 
our masses. Among the peasantry, in whose eyes their mir 
is their country, the devotion of each individual to the mir 
has been made the key-note of social morality. They have 
learned to exercise self-restraint in petty every-day conces- 
sions and services to the mir, and have risen to the sublim- 
ity of heroism in their acts of self-sacrifice for its good. 
Examples of this are frequent. To ** suffer for the mir," 
to be put in chains and to be thrown into prison as the 
mir's khodoJc or messenger — " sent to the Czar '' with the 
mir's grievances ; to be beaten, exiled to Siberia or to the 
mines, for having stood up boldly for the rights of the mir 
against some powerful oppressor — such are the forms of 
heroism to which an enthusiastic peasant agpires, and which 
the people extol. 

The orthodox Church has no hold over the souls of the 
masses. The pop, or priest, is but an official of the bu- 
reaucracy and depredator of the commune. But we hardly 
need to say that the high ethics of Christianity, the appeal 
to brotherly love, to forgiveness, to self-sacrifice for the 
good of others, yet have always found an echo in the re- 
sponsive chords of our people's hearts. "The type of a 
saint, as conceived by our peasants," says Uspensky, " is not 
that of an anchorite, timidly secluded from the world, lest 
some part of the treasure he is accumulating in heaven 



90 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

might get damaged. Our popular saint is a man of the 
mir, a man of practical piety, a teacher and benefactor of 
the people.'' In Athanasieff's collection of popular legends 
we find an illustration of this idea. Two saints — St. Cassian 
and St. Nicolas — have come before the face of the Lord. 

" What hast thou seen on the earth T' asks the Lord of 
St. Cassian, who first approached. " I have seen a moujik 
foundering with his car in a marsh by the way-side." 

"Why hast thou not helped him?" "Because I was 
coming into Thy presence, and was afraid of spoiling my 
bright clothes." 

The turn of St. Nicolas comes, who approaches with his 
dress all besmeared. 

" Why comest thou so dirty into my presence ?" asks the 
Lord. " Because I was following St. Cassian, and seeing 
the moujik of whom he just spoke, I have helped him out 
of the marsh." 

" Well," said the Lord, " because thou, Cassian, hast cared 
so much about thy dress and so little about thy brother, I 
will give thee thy saint's day only once in four years. And 
to thee, Nicolas, for having acted as thou didst, I will give 
four saint's days each year." 

That is why St. Cassian's Day falls on the 29th of Feb- 
ruary, in leap-year, and St. Nicolas has a saint's day each 
quarter. 

Such is the peasant's interpretation of Christian morality. 
And is it not suggestive that the greatest novelist of our 
time, and a man of such vast intelligence as Count Leo 
Tolstoi', in making his attempt to found a purely ethical 
religion, formulates his views by referring the educated 
classes to the gospel as it is understood hy the moujik ? 

Since I do not in the least presume to sketch anything 
like a full picture of our people's moral physiognomy I 
shall stop here. My sole object has been to show that our 
peasantry, on the whole, as it has entered into political life 



THE MOUJIKS AND THE RUSSIAN DEMOCEACY. 91 

and freedom after centuries of internal growth, presents a 
race with highly developed social instincts and many ele- 
ments promising further progress, and that the feelings of 
deep respect, sometimes of enthusiastic admiration, which 
the Russian democrats feel for the peasantry are not de- 
void of foundation. 

These feelings may often have been exaggerated, especial- 
ly of old, when the two classes for the first time came into 
close contact. But excess of idealization and sentimentality 
have become matters of history. They were destroyed by 
the rough touch of reality ; and the mighty figure of the 
hero of the plough has lost nothing by being stripped of 
tinsel. Hewn in unpolished stone, he looks better than 
when robed in marble. The charm of his strength, daunt- 
less courage, and of his moral character is strengthened by 
the thrilling voice of pity for the overwhelming, the inde- 
scribable, sufferings of this child-like giant. A passion for 
Equality and Fraternity is and will ever be the strongest, 
we may say the only strong social feeling in Russia. It is 
by no means the privilege of Nihilists, or advanced par- 
ties of any kind ; it is shared by the enormous majority of 
our educated classes. 

Man is a sociable being. He yearns to attach himself to 
something vaster than a family, having a longer existence 
than his immediate surroundings. The feeling in which 
this yearning finds its commonest and easiest expression is 
patriotism, embracing the whole of the nation, the State, 
and the people being blended into one. For us Russians 
no such blending is possible. The crimes, the cruelties, 
equalled only by the folly of those who are representing 
Russia as a State, stand there to prevent it. 

No, no true Russian can ever wish godspeed to the Gov- 
ernment of his country. And yet we Russians are most 
ardent patriots. We have no attachment to our birthplace 
or any particular locality. But we love our people, our 



92 TIIE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

race, as intensely and organically as the Jews ; and we are 
almost as incapable of getting thoroughly acclimatized in 
any other nation. In describing Eussia's real and not ficti- 
tious glories, in speaking when in an expansive mood about 
his country's probable future and the service she is likely 
to render to mankind, a Russian can startle a Chauviniste of 
the grande nation. Yes, we are certainly patriotic — only 
our patriotism runs entirely towards the realization of the 
democratic ideal. The idea of country is embodied for us 
not in our State but in our people, in the moujiks and in 
those various elements which make the moujiks' cause our 
own. Our hopes, our devotion, our love, and that irresisti- 
ble idealism which stimulates to great labor, all that consti- 
tutes the essence of patriotism, with us is democratic. 

In the following chapters I will relate how our popular 
notions of morality and justice bore the test of adversity ; 
what was the form assumed in villages by the corrosive ele- 
ments, and how the people defended their traditional ideals 
of life. 

We will begin by briefly sketching the tendencies of the 
purely political elements newly introduced into Russian 
village life, as they are more circumscribed in their action 
and far less wide-spread than the economical. 



PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 



CHAPTER I. 

As soon as the Government had earnestly set its mind on 
the emancipation of the serfs the all-important questions 
had to be faced as to how all these millions of newly made 
citizens should be managed and kept in order, and how 
they should be made to pay the price of their redemption 
to the lords of the manors, and the taxes to the State. 
The bureaucratic commission appointed for the settlement 
of this great problem of the Emancipation, with usual bu- 
reaucratic foresight and profundity, at first proposed that 
to the former seigneurs should be intrusted the administra- 
tion, the justice, and the police of the rural districts. 

This would have been neither more nor less than a rein- 
statement, only in another form, of serfdom — a joke made 
all the more dangerous in that there was but too much rea- 
son to anticipate bitter disappointments on the part of the 
people on many other points connected with their libera- 
tion. Fortunately for itself, the Government listened to 
wiser counsel, offered by local committees and the Press, 
which pointed to the village communes as to natural and 
long-established institutions standing ready to their hand 
and existing throughout the country. The village com- 
mune was preserved. The open-air meetings of all the 
peasants, the mir, were acknowledged as the chief authority 
both in the village commune and in the rural volost, or dis- 



94 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.. 

trict, an administrative unit embracing a few village com- 
munes. 

But here most puzzling questions of detail presented 
themselves to the minds of the St. Petersburg legislators. 
Notwithstanding the benevolent regard for the peasants which 
prevailed at this epoch in the highest governmental circles^ 
our law-givers could not admit that the mir might be left 
just as they found it. It was more than the most refined 
bureaucratic mind could digest — the mir and the tchin! 
It was as though two cultures, two different worlds, we may 
almost say two different types of human nature, as strongly 
individualized as they were antipathetic, had suddenly been 
brought face to face. 

What is a tchinovniJc? It is a man convinced that were 
it not for his " prescriptions," " instructions," and " enjoin- 
ments " the world would go all askew, and the people would 
suddenly begin to drink ink instead of water, to put their 
breeches on their heads instead of on their legs, and to 
commit all sorts of other incono^ruities. As all his life is 
passed from his most tender youth upward in offices, amid 
heaps of scribbled papers, in complete isolation from any 
touch with real life, the tchinovnik understands nothing, has 
faith in nothing but these papers. He is as desperately 
sceptical as regards human nature as a monk, and does not 
trust one atom to men's virtue, honesty, or truthfulness. 
There is nothing in the world which can be relied upon but 
scribbled papers, and he is their votary. 

Such an institution as the mir — a self-governing body 
with no trace of hierarchy or distinction of ranks, wielding 
an authority so extensive that in its own sphere of action it 
might be called unlimited, and at the same time wishing for 
no record of its proceedings, confiding in people's good 
faith and the infallible guidance of such a thing as collec- 
tive conscience and wisdom — such an institution as the mir, 
to the mind of a tchinovnik must have appeared incoherent, 



PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 95 

incompreliensible, almost contrary to the laws of nature. 
It was his most sacred duty to bring order into this chaos. 

Every Russian village commune elects its elder or mayor, 
who is by virtue of his office its spokesman and delegate 
before the authorities. In the village itself the elder is nei- 
ther the chief nor even the primus inter pares, but simply 
the trusted servant and executor of the orders of the mir. 
The mir discusses and regulates everything that falls within 
its narrow and simple sphere of action, leaving hardly any- 
thing to the discrimination and judgment of its agent. So 
simple and subordinate are the elder's duties that any 
peasant, provided he be neither a drunkard nor a thief, is 
eligible for the post. In many villages, in order to avoid 
discussion, the office of elder is filled in turn by all the 
members of the mir. As the eldership brings the peasant 
into frequent, almost daily contact with the administration, 
which involves him in endless trouble and annoyance, peas- 
ants show very little ambition to fill the office. Much per- 
suasion, sometimes remonstrance and abuse, are necessary 
before an honest peasant, who has not the feathering of his 
nest in view at the expense of the commune, can be induced 
to accept this post of honor. 

Some writers — Mr. Mackenzie Wallace among them — in 
describing Russian village life, wonder at this strange lack 
of political ambition. I think it only too natural. Our 
moujiks have not studied the history of Rome, Athens, 
and other republics, nor do they so much as suspect the 
existence of great municipalities such as London, Paris, or 
New York. No obsequious imagination suggests to them 
flattering analogies, and they cannot see that the proffered 
dignity is anything but a double servitude — to the mir on 
the one hand and to the administration on the other, with 
no room whatever for the proud self-assertion which gives 
the charm of office to the gifted ; a burden and a public 
work, differing from those of mending the roads, digging 



96 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

wells, or transporting government freigLts only in so far 
that it is more trying and more troublesome. 

Now, in modifying the system of rural self-government 
the St. Petersburg tchinovniks were inspired to transform 
this very modest and humble village elder into a diminu- 
tive tchinovnik, created in their own image and likeness. 
The task was not without its diflBculties. The elder was as 
a rule deficient in the most essential qualification for bis 
profession — he could not write ! It was therefore neces- 
sary that he should be provided with a secretary, who could 
inscribe the paper to which he should aflSx his seal or his 
cross. This important person, the clerk, was generally a 
perfect stranger to the village, a man picked up from the 
streets. As the law must needs give him extensive powers^ 
it was all the more desirable that he should be easily con- 
trolled. 

Our legislators proved equal to their task ; for they 
blessed our villagers with a system of law-court proceed- 
ings which would do honor to much bigger places. To 
give some idea of their method, suffice it to say that the 
clerk of the volost is bound to supply his office with no less 
than sixty-five different registers, wherein to keep a record 
of the sixty-five various papers he has to issue daily, month- 
ly, or quarterly. This was pushing their solicitude for the 
welfare of the countrymen rather too far, and taxing the 
clerk's powers rather too highly. In some of the larger 
volosts one man does not suffice for the task, and the peas- 
ants are compelled to maintain two, nay, even three clerks. 
It is needless to add that such a complication of legal busi- 
ness can in no way keep an adroit clerk in check nor pre- 
vent the abuse of his power. The opposite is rather the 
case. The figure cut by the pisar, or clerk, in the annals 
of our new rural local government is a most unseemly one 
indeed. In its earlier period it was decidedly its blackest 
point. 



PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 97 

The Government has undoubtedly had a hand in making 
the pisar such a disreputable character, by expressly pro- 
hibiting the engagement for this office of men of good 
education — for fear of a revolution. All who have com- 
pleted their studies at a gymnasium (college), much more 
those who have attended a high-school, are precluded from 
filling this post. Only the more ignorant, those who have 
been expelled from college or who have never passed far- 
ther than through a primary school, have been trusted 
to approach the peasantry at such close quarters. Being 
generally self-seekers, and not particularly high-minded, 
they easily turned the peculiar position in which they were 
placed to their own advantage. The pisar, the interpreter 
of the law, and more often than not, the only literate man 
in the district, could practically do whatever he chose. 
The elder, his nominal chief, in whom the word law in- 
spired the same panic that it did in the breast of every 
other peasant, and who was quite bewildered by the bureau- 
cratic complication of his new administrative duties, was 
absolutely helpless in the pisar's hands. 

The elders could, however, find ample compensation for 
this kind of involuntary dependence in the consciousness 
of the power they wielded over the rest of the villagers. 
At the present day they are really chiefs and masters. To 
the elders of both grades was granted the right of imposing 
fines, to the extent of one ruble at a time ; also the right to 
imprison or to impose compulsory labor for a period not 
exceeding two days on any member of their respective 
communes or volost. This " at their own discretion and 
without appeal," for any word, or act, or slight which they 
might consider derogatory to their dignity, such as omis- 
sion to take off a hat before them, etc., of which there have 
been instances in recent times. 

Neither with regard to the mir as a whole may the el- 
der's rights be lightlv trifled with. In them is vested the 
1 



98 THE EUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

exclusive riijbt of conveninor meetinfrs of the commune or 
the volost. A meetino: assembled without their authoriza- 
tion is declared illegal, its resolutions void, and its con- 
veners liable to severe penalties. By withdrawing from a 
meeting the elder can break it up whenever he considers 
that the debate is taking an unlawful turn. Thus the elder, 
though elected by popular vote, when once confirmed in 
his office becomes, for all practical purposes, the master of 
the body which elected him. A strange sort of local gov- 
ernment certainly, though by no means an exceptional one 
under an autocracy. The local governments granted to 
our provinces in 1864, and to our towns in 1871, are mod- 
elled on exactly the same pattern. In both the chairman 
has more power than the body he presides over ; an ar- 
rangemement which has, as is well known, deprived both 
the provincial and the municipal governments of all vitality. 

It is interesting to observe that in the villages the same 
trick did not produce this same effect. There the legisla- 
tion met with an ancient custom of collective communal 
life and local government w^hich no ukase could uproot. 
True that in the last twenty years great corruption had 
crept in, even in the case of village government. But this 
was due to the internal economical decomposition of the 
village commune, which divided the inhabitants into two 
camps, the one composed of a knot of rich people, and the 
other of a mass of proletarians and beggars. The law then 
became a ready-made channel for the manifestations of the 
new anti-social elements, but not its direct cause. 

So long as the process of the economical disintegration 
of the peasantry remains in an incipient state, as also in 
the thousands of communes which have until the present 
time preserved their original economical character, the 
bureaucratic prescriptions of the law remain a dead letter. 
The mir keeps to the traditional forms of local govern- 
ment. The elders, too, imbued with these traditions just 



PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 99 

as much as are their fellow-peasants, never think of making 
use of the strange powers reposed in them by the State. 
They remain in the subordinate and modest position for- 
merly assigned to them — the " mir's men," to use our peo- 
ple's own expression. 

It fared far worse with the other series of manipulations 
introduced into rural government, and which formed the 
natural supplement to those just dealt with. 

Local village government had as yet to be linked in hier- 
archical order with the whole of the administrative machine 
of the State. After having created, in the midst of the 
once democratic villages, a sort of tchin, it was necessary to 
discover another tchin to which to subject the newly found- 
ed one. 

The Government, in the honey-moon of its liberalism, 
acted with sense and discretion in intrusting this function 
to the mediators, oflScers nominated conjointly by the min- 
istry and by the election of the citizens. These mediators, 
elected from among the liberal and really well-intentioned 
part of the nobility, exercised their authority with modera- 
tion and wisdom, not so much as regarded subjection to the 
control of the mir, which was perfectly equal to its task, 
but to protect it from the abuses and malversations of the 
local police and its pisars. 

Since 1863, the year of the Polish Insurrection, which 
marks the point at which our Government adopted a policy 
of reaction, the state of things has changed considerably. 
The Government then threw all the weight of its authori- 
ty into the scale with the party of the " planters," as the 
obdurate advocates of serfdom were, in 1861, christened. 
The whole administration changed sides, and Russia has 
since seen mediators who have used their powers in order 
to compel the peasants to gratuitously do all sorts of work 
on their estates; who have publicly flogged the elders — 
mocking at the law, which exempted them from corporal 



100 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

punishment, by first degrading them from their oflSce, and 
then restoring to them the attributes of their dignity after 
they have been flogged. 

The regular bondage of the mir began, however, a few 
years later. From 1868 down to 1874, when the office of 
the mediators was entirely suppressed, the mir gradually 
passed under the supreme command of the ispravnik, i.e., 
the superintendents of the local police. 

The peasants' bitterest enemy could not have made a 
worse choice. 

A police-officer — we are speaking now of the common 
police, charged with the general maintenance of order and 
the putting down of common offenders — is a tchin in the 
administrative hierarchy like all the others. But between 
him and a paper — scribbling — tchin of the innumerable gov- 
ernment offices there is as wide a difference as between a 
decent, peaceful Chinese, votary of his ten thousand com- 
mandments, and a brutal and fierce Mogul of Jenghiz — 
though both have beardless faces and oblique eyes. A 
police tchin is our man of action. With him the instru- 
ment of command is not the pen, but the fist, the rod, and 
the stick. He breaks more teeth and flays more backs than 
he issues papers. As regards other people's property, tchins 
of all denominations hold the same somewhat strange views. 
But while the scribbling tchins cheat and swindle, the police 
tchins ransack and extort like Oriental pachas. 

In the villages, among the moujiks, who will suffer to the 
uttermost before " going to law," the police can afford to 
go to any extreme short of open homicide and arson. The 
function of tax-collector alone, which, after the Emancipa- 
tion, was intrusted to the police, offered a vast field for inter- 
ference, abuse, and oppression, and of these the early zem- 
stvos often complain. When the ispravniks were charged 
with the chief control of the rural administration, and could 
at their pleasure, and by way of disciplinary punishment, 



PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 101 

indict, fine, and imprison both the district and communal 
elders, self-government by the peasants, as such, was prac- 
tically abolished. It could exist only as far and in so much 
as the police chose to tolerate it. " The ispravniks, thanks 
to the powers they have received, have transformed the 
elected oflScers of the rural government, the elders, into their 
submissive servants, who are more dependent on them than 
are even the soldiers of the police-stations ;" that is the 
statement made by the most competent authorities on the 
subject, the members of the zemstvos.* 

The village communes have become for the country 
police a permanent source of income, often levied in a way 
which reminds one forcibly of the good old days of serf- 
dom. Thus, in the circular issued by the Minister of the 
Interior on March 29, 1880, we find the significant confes- 
sion that, " according to the reports accumulated in the 
oflSces of the ministry," the country police-oflScers, profiting 
by their right to have one orderly to run their errands, were 
in the habit of taking from forty to fifty such orderlies 
from the communes under their command, whom they used 
as their house and field laborers. In some cases the com- 
munes, instead of this tribute of gratuitous labor, paid a 
regular tribute of money (called ohror by former serfs), 
amounting in some provinces, according to the same author- 
ity, to from forty thousand to sixty thousand rubles a year 
per province. 

^ Ritssian Courier^ Nov. 8, 1884. 



CHAPTER II. 

The stanovois and ispravniks are the menials of the 
provincial administration. Set over them are the Governors 
of the provinces, with the Governors - general of regions 
containing several provinces, both surrounded by a swarm 
of tchinovniks, attached to their persons or grouped on 
"boards," "chambers," or "courts of justice" of various 
denominations. They do not come into direct contact with 
the moujiks, unless in exceptional cases, and by means of a 
few special officers. 

In these higher grades of the administration the chief 
means possessed by the servants of the public for enriching 
themselves at the expense of the peasantry assume a more 
refined form than that of petty bribery, and are at the same 
time far more profitable. They are the embezzlement of 
land. 

I will pass over all the common every-day malversations 
of which the peasants are victims. Those I will take as a 
matter of course ; but I will devote a few pages to describ- 
ing this peculiar mode of plunder because it is practised on 
the largest scale by the whole of the Russian official world, 
from petty clerks up to the Governors, Governors-general, 
Ministers, and courtiers, both male and female. 

The provinces of those vast Oriental regions bordered by 
the steppes of Central Asia have grown particularly famous 
of late, by reason of the extensive and barefaced embezzle- 
ment of the land. The land there is plentiful ; the bulk of 
the population consists of alien tribes, who know next to 
nothing of Russian law or even of the Russian tongue, Rus- 



PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 103 

sian being nevertheless the language in which all ofiBcial 
documents are drawn up. 

The tchinovniks are all-powerful here, and practically be- 
yond control, so enormous are the distances from the cen- 
tral government. They can and they do profit by these 
opportunities, and permanently improve their private fort- 
unes by robbing the people of the land, their sole valuable 
possession. 

For the edification of those who indulge in singing paeans 
to Russia's mission of civilization to the barbaric tribes of 
Asia it must be observed that these services are not without 
their drawbacks. The Russian advance in these regions 
presents two markedly different stages. The first, which 
follows immediately upon the conquest or the peaceful an- 
nexation, shows the Russian rule in a most favorable light. 
Order is established, slavery and brigandage disappear, as 
do also the distinctions of race ; laws are made equal for all, 
and respect to them enforced with severity tempered by 
justice. The best men of the Empire, such as Count Perov- 
sky, Mouravieff of the Amoor, Tcherniaeff, Kaufmann, in 
all of whom ambition is stronger than cupidity, are sent to 
administer the newly annexed territories. They generally 
defend the natives as far as they can even against Russian 
officials, and the hosts of adventurers and swindlers who 
follow in the rear of a conquering army. 

During this period the Russian settlers are almost exclu- 
sively peasants, who are invited and encouraged to migrate 
into the newly acquired country, in order to give Russia a 
stronger footing there. The Russian moujiks never fail to 
answer to such an appeal. The words *'free land " produce 
a magic effect on them, and they constantly stream in all 
directions where such treasure is to be found. Thousands 
of Russian villages have quite recently been founded on 
the Amoor, on the enormous plains of Southern Siberia, 
among the Bashkirs, Khirghis, and Kalmucks of the Oofa, 



104 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

Orenboorg, and Samara provinces, of which we shall shortly 
have to speak. Often the colonists precede the conquerors, 
penetrating into neighboring countries scores of years before 
the armies. The annexation merely increases this move- 
ment. But in these parts land is plentiful — nobody suffers 
from the intrusion. The peasants take only so much land 
as they can till with their own hands, never appropriating 
one acre more. Furthermore they rarely decline to enter 
into a friendly compromise with the natives. 

While the Government of Siberia had to resort to the 
most drastic measures, such as the knout and hard labor, to 
prevent the nobility and rich merchants from converting 
the natives into slaves, the peasants of the provinces of As- 
trakhan or Samara or Orenboorg often paid a yearly tribute 
in money or in goods to the nomads whose lands they had 
appropriated. The rent in these districts is, however, so 
low, and the chances of receiving it so small, that neither 
the tchinovniks nor the capitalists feel tempted to acquire 
estates. The husbandmen of both nationalities have thus 
plenty of land for tillage. 

The position changes when the increase of population 
has considerably raised the value of land and diminished 
the amount to be disposed of. By this time the province 
has become solidly incorporated with the rest of the Em- 
pire, requiring neither particular ability nor care in its ad- 
ministration. The men of talent, ambition, and energy are 
attracted to other fields. Their posts are filled by common- 
place tchinovniks, who start a new mode of "Russifying" 
and "benefiting" the country — by taking the land from 
both the natives and their own countrymen, the Russian 
colonists, with perfect impartiality. 

This spoliation of land is going on everywhere, even in 
Siberia. For this we have the testimony of Yadrinzeff, who 
is our best authority on Siberian matters; though in this 
enormous desert, covered with ice and marshes and impene- 



PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 105 

trable brushwood, the plunder is of necessity confined to 
those few districts more thickly populated than the rest. 
On the Siberian main, with its one inhabitant to every three 
square kilometres — two square miles (English) — the land is 
as yet free. The peasantry know of neither rent nor com- 
munal property : each husbandman takes as much land as 
he can find and can cultivate. But in other colonies and 
regions more favored by nature the robbery of land is per- 
petrated on a very large, sometimes gigantic scale, and is 
the chief speculation of the tchinovniks, their relatives, and 
their hangers-on, as well as of their St. Petersburg protectors. 

Thus in the vast provinces of Oofa and Orenboorg, which 
together cover an area equal to that of the United King- 
dom — the officials with their numerous retinue have, in the 
period between 1873 to 1879, by force and fraud embezzled 
no less than five million acres of the best arable land and 
timber wood of those districts. 

The whole operation was carried out with all the appear- 
ance of legality, and was screened behind the plausible pre- 
text of the " Russification " of the provinces and " the im- 
provement of their industries." With this object in view 
the officials asked and obtained permission to sell the land 
"unoccupied by peasants of any race," "on easy terms," 
to officials " who have merited such favor by their faithful 
services to the State." 

As a matter of fact, only one item of that fable was true : 
the terms were the easiest imaginable, as excellent arable 
land, besides timber wood, which in these parts costs from 
fifty to one hundred rubles* a dessiatine, were sold to the 
officials for merely nominal prices, varying from eight shil- 
lings down to tenpence a dessiatine, payable over long peri- 
ods, varying from ten up to thirty -seven years. All the 
rest of the tale was an impudent falsehood and farce. 



* A ruble is worth about two shillings. 



106 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

The land officially designated as free for occupation had 
generally been owned for generations, either by native Bash- 
kir villagers or by Kussians who had migrated years ago 
from the interior provinces. It was precisely this fact 
which made these estates particularly attractive to the offi- 
cials, as it enabled them to turn an honest penny. A cer- 
tain Yusefovitch bougrht an estate of 1017 dessiatines* for 
4804 rubles, and resold it to the peasants for 25,000 
rubles. Another estate, for which 506 rubles were paid 
to the crown, was resold a few days later to the resident 
peasants for 15,000 rubles. A third Government official 
bought an estate for two rubles per dessiatine, and imme- 
diately let it to its occupants at a rental of twelve rubles 
a year per dessiatine ! 

Of course but few of the peasants were able to pay such 
a heavy ransom for their own land. And for those Avho 
could not pay there was the sole alternative: either to be 
evicted or to accept a sort of serfdom, i.e., to work gratui- 
tously on the estates of their new landlords as remuneration 
for that small portion of land which he vouchsafed to leave 
in their hands. Thus was the bulk of the rural population 
of these provinces almost totally ruined, reduced to beggary 
and indigence, and decimated by hunger. 

In distributing these iniquitous gifts, the administration 
in most cases could not even put forward any services ren- 
dered to the State {i.e., useless scribbling for regularly paid 
salaries) as a pretext. A private person, a teacher, who 
was not so much as a member of the civil service, paid 
900 rubles for an estate which he immediately resold for 
15,000. Two gymnasts bought each an estate of 1000 
dessiatines for 2000 rubles, to be paid over thirty - seven 
years, while both relet their land at once for 900 rubles 
per year. 

. * A dessiatine is equal to 2.7 acres. 



PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 107 

There was no limit to the favoritism shown by the un- 
controllable administration. A father received an estate of 
6000 dessiatines; while to his daughters 1000 each were 
allotted, and to his sons 2000 each. The son married; his 
wife's relatives were endowed with an estate. The next to 
marry was a daughter — her husband received an estate, and 
his family another. 

The contagion of this land hunger spread far beyond 
the sphere of Oofa and Orenboorg officialdom. Scores of 
tchinovniks flocked from St. Petersburg and other quarters, 
probably armed with good introductions, and, after having 
" served" in the provinces two or three years, received their 
rewards in the form of splendid estates of from two to three 
thousand dessiatines and upwards, in the most fertile parts 
of the country, on the shores of big, navigable rivers. 

The Ministry of the Interior, then presided over by Count 
Valueff, at last grew jealous of the privileges enjoyed by 
the Governor-general, who had such an Eldorado to dispose 
of, and ended by distributing estates on its own account to 
its own favorites. When the Senatorial Revision of 1879, 
called forth by all these scandalous corruptions, began its 
investigations, several of the highest officers of the Imperial 
court and Government hastened to voluntarily resign their 
ill-gotten riches in order to avoid judicial proceedings. 

It was rumored that even the Minister of the Interior, 
Valueff, had had a finger in the pie. The reporters of Ger- 
man and English newspapers communicated news to that 
effect abroad, and the minister was indeed dismissed shortly 
after. The Russian press, however, in spite of this, received 
the following significant secret order, dated 4th October, 
1881 : "In some foreign periodicals it has been stated that 
Count P. A. Valueff has been implicated in the prosecutions 
now proceeding for misappropriation of laud in the Oren- 
boorg region. The head board of management of the press 
department requests that the papers will not circulate, nor 



108 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

SO much as mention these reports.'' Thus were these ru- 
mors suppressed without being so much as denied. 

A no less conspicuous part in the wholesale peculation of 
land in the Oofa and Orenboorg provinces was played by 
the forcible or fraudulent " purchase " of land from the na- 
tives by the officials themselves, or with their active conni- 
vance. To show to what an impudent extent this legalized 
robbery was pushed, one illustration will suffice. 

In 1873 four local capitalists joined in purchasing from 
the Bashkir peasants 30,000 dessiatines of land, lying on 
the shores of the Oofa River, for the sum of 21,000 rubles, 
on condition that if it were afterwards found that there was 
more land in the estate than was specified in the agreement, 
they, the buyers, should have no further sum to pay : * 

This agreement was, as usual, guaranteed by an enormous 
fine of 150,000 rubles. It was presented, as prescribed by 
law, for examination to the mediator, the immediate chief 
and protector of the peasants of his district, who approved 
of it and handed it on to headquarters — the Civil Board of 
Oofa — for registration. It was duly registered, and the four 
sharks formally invested with the right of ownership. 

But at this point the Bashkirs *^ rebelled," and refused to 
fulfil their part of the engagement, and sent their men to 
lodge complaints in various quarters. After a " long series 
of charges," the Governor-general resolved to send a special 
inspector to the spot to inquire into the case. This in- 
spector chanced to be an honest man, who investigated the 
matter fairly, and reported : first, that the estate purchased 
comprised full 70,000 dessiatines ; and secondly that it in- 
cluded splendid timber wood, which in these parts was worth 
no less than one hundred rubles a dessiatine. lie discov- 



* Such strange clauses as this are to be found in most agreements 
of this description, because the Bashkirs are easily cheated in the 
measurement of land. 



PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 109 

ered, moreover, as was natural, that the Bashkirs were quite 
unwilling to part with their property on such terms, and 
that the agcreement to sell it had been extorted from them 
by threats, and under compulsion. 

The mediator, their immediate superior, and the magis- 
trate of the district, had ordered thera to sign it, and had 
also arrested and removed from the village, '' for disobe- 
dience and calumny against men in office," the twenty-four 
householders who had protested and absolutely declined to 
put their hands to the agreement. In conclusion, the in- 
spector reported that in acknowledgment of their services 
both the mediator and the magistrate had received small 
estates from their grateful clients. 

The mediators and the magistrates were not the only offi- 
cials who lent themselves to these disgraceful practices. 
Persons who held higher berths in the provincial govern- 
ment did the same. Members of the Governor - general's 
Privy Council, who enjoyed the full confidence of the chief 
of the department, and through him held command over 
the police, "persuaded" the Bashkirs to sell their land to 
various persons on terms similar to those quoted above, and 
acquired on their own account about 30,000 dessiatincs of 
land, mostly rich in timber wood. 

A certain Shott, father-in-law of Cholodkovsky, chief of 
the Civil Service Department, acquired by similar " pur- 
chases" 50,000 dessiatincs of land. Threats, extortions, 
imprisonment, and open violence were resorted to for crush- 
ing obstinate resistance. The officers most directly respon- 
sible for the protection of the peasantry from malversation 
and injustice, the mediators and the members of the Peas- 
ants' Court of Justice, had the largest share in this whole- 
sale plunder. 

A special commissioner, a general and chamberlain to the 
Emperor, Burnasheff, was sent from St. Petersburg in 1874 
for the purpose of revising the Oofa Civil Board. He re- 



110 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

ported that everything was as it should be there. But it 
was afterwards discovered that he had himself " purchased" 
an estate of 20,000 dessiatines for 40,000 rubles in the 
Belebeef district, with the usual prescription of 80,000 ru- 
bles in case of the non-fulfilment of the agreement. This 
transaction was, however, annulled by the Senate in 1878. 

The total number of agreements of this complexion regis- 
tered by the Oofa Civil Board up to the time of the arrival 
of the Senatorial Inquiry Commission was one hundred and 
twelve ; and the area of land covered by them was nothing 
less than 1,000,000 dessiatines, or 2,700,000 acres. 

The Senatorial Inquiry Commission sent into these prov- 
inces by special order of the Emperor annulled some of the 
most scandalous of these legalized robberies, while some of 
the highest officials returned to the Crown the estates they 
had received, declaring their ignorance of the injustice done 
to the peasantry who had previously held them. But the 
enormous majority of these land-robbers were not so sen- 
sitive about their reputations, and contrived to keep their 
booty. This has been revealed by the agrarian disturbances 
which occurred in these provinces some three years later, in 
1882, and which extended over four districts. 

The Bashkirs of the province of Oofa have been despoiled 
of their land definitely and irretrievably. The Governor- 
general, Kryshanovsky, who had headed the band of rob- 
bers, was dismissed ; other officials got off with a " repri- 
mand ;" no one was indicted before a regular tribunal. Even 
this rebuke, however mild, was caused by the absolute want 
of discretion and moderation shown on the part of the rob- 
bers themselves, who in the fever of greed forgot all moder- 
ation and caution, and made the Oofa malversations a by- 
word to the whole Russian press. 

In the neighboring province of Samara, which lies on 
the left shore of the Middle Volga, and covers an area 
three times as large as Switzerland, the Administration has 



PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. Ill 

done exactly the same thing, without incurring any annoy- 
ance. The ethnographical and economical conditions of 
these two contiguous regions are pretty much the same, 
the northern part of the Samara plain, the Bagulminsk dis- 
trict, being chiefly populated by Bashkirs, the southern by 
Russian colonists, with a sprinkling of native Mordvas and 
Kalmucks, the latter mostly keeping to a nomadic state. 

Twenty years ago the land was so plentiful in these parts 
that the peasants could rent from the Crown or from the 
native nomads as much as they chose for from ten to fif- 
teen kopecks a dessiatine. During the last twenty to 
twenty-five years things have gradually changed. The land 
was despoiled by officials and the private individuals whom 
they favored. Up to 1881 the total amount of land thus 
abstracted from the Russian settlers amounted to about 
700,000 dessiatines, or 1,890,000 acres. Enormous tracts 
of land were taken from the Kalmucks by means of sham 
purchases, more vile even than those practised upon the 
agricultural Bashkirs. The spoliation was effected grad- 
ually and cautiously, but the final result was the same. 
The Samara peasantry, prosperous in by-gone days, is now 
one of the most wretched and hunger-stricken. Famine is 
of constant recurrence in this province, the most terrible 
being those of 1878 and 1881, when in some villages one- 
fourth of the whole population died from starvation. In 
the same years millions of puds of corn were exported from 
the province by the landlords, who battened on the land 
which had been robbed from the people. 

If we skip the province of Astrakhan, composed mostly 
of saline sands, where nothing can be got to grow and 
which are not worth robbing, we shall find ourselves in the 
Caucasus — the gem of nature, the country which disputes 
with the valley of the Euphrates the glory of having been 
the place chosen for the earthly Paradise of tradition. Our 
great poets and novelists, Pushkin, Lermontoff, Tolstoi, owe 



112 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

many of tlieir best inspirations to the snow-clad Caucasus, 
and they have all contributed to render familiar and dear 
to the Russians its sumptuous, grand, and grim character, 
as well as its noble, simple, and chivalrous inhabitants. 

Nowadays, though as poetical as ever, the Caucasus has 
ceased to be the country of romance. Its warlike mount- 
aineers are subdued, the country is peaceful ; the Hadji 
Abrecks, the Kazbitchs, the Ismail Beys, the Abrecks, 
the terror of the valleys, are no longer to be met with 
there in living flesh and blood. These heroes of the 
poniard and cimeter have disappeared under forty years 
of uncontested Russian rule, and in the natural course of 
things have been supplanted by robbers, who may very pos- 
sibly be as mischievous as they, but who certainly have 
nothing of romance or poetry left about them. The plun- 
der of the State and of the people as regards their landed 
wealth (we will confine ourselves to this question here), by 
the Caucasian Administration and its proteges, combines 
the characteristics of both the Oofa and the Samara rob- 
beries. 

It is as extensive and barefaced as in the first-named 
province, and as safe as in the last. The Caucasus is ad- 
ministered, not by a simple Governor -general, but by a 
grandee of a much higher grade, a lieutenant who is, with 
rare exceptions, a grand-duke, brother or uncle of the Czar. 
Nothing need be feared behind such a screen. Moreover, 
the dangers and difficulties of the conquest of the Cau- 
casus, though they ceased to exist some thirty years ago, 
still furnish a good pretext for the distribution of sinecures. 

In this fabulously rich country the Government owns 
vast tracts of land, forests, mines of priceless value, and 
mineral springs classed under four hundred and eleven 
"heads" in the oflScial list, which, however, bring to the 
exchequer next to nothing — at the outside an average of 
seventy-three rubles per estate. The reason for this is very 



PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 113 

simple ; the greatest number, two hundred and fifty - five 
out of four hundred and eleven, are given to tchinovniks 
almost free of charge. In the province of Kutais an es- 
tate comprising 2000 dessiatines of arable land was let to 
a tchinovnik for ten rubles, or one pound, a year. In the 
Viliet district of the same province, 1000 dessiatines of 
arable land were let to another man at a rental of twenty- 
five rubles per annum ; and so on.* 

During the same period, from 1866 to 1875, the Admin- 
istration disposed of about 100,000 dessiatines of land, 
from which its former inhabitants, the Circassians, had 
been expelled with fire and sword. Of this, 23,000 des- 
siatines were distributed among the military, and 26,000 
among members of the Civil Service, while 50,000 were 
sold at merely nominal prices to a lot of speculators who 
obtained the protection of the Administration. 

In the vicinity of Baku lies the land containing the pe- 
troleum springs, which is valued at from 25,000 to 60,000 
rubles a dessiatine. After the abolition of the power of 
sale by auction of some of the State revenue, this land 
was declared inalienable. Yet General Staroselsky, Prince 
Withenstein, and Prince Amilakhvary were each presented 
with ten dessiatines of this most valuable land. The Prin- 
cess of Gagarine, wife of the Governor of the province of 
Kutais, received five dessiatines of petroleum land, which 
she exchanged for 7000 dessiatines of ordinary arable land 
in the province of Stavropol. Other five dessiatines of this 
same land were granted to the Princess Orbeliany. Full 
forty-five dessiatines were presented to the members of the 
Caucasian Civil Service for their relief fund. At the time 
to which all these statements refer, the short liberal respite 
of 1881, when the press was permitted to allude to such 
subjects, it was proposed to distribute the greater part of 

* Slovo, 1880, vii. 
8 



114 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

the forest covering the shores of the Black Sea in Abkhasia 
among the members of the Civil Service. 

Our story will never draw to a close if we attempt to 
mention all that came to light in this question of land-rob- 
bery in the border provinces alone. 

And how about the central provinces ? Are the peasants 
dwelling there guaranteed at least against this form of 
oppression ? Not quite — though of course nothing like the 
wholesale theft going on in the border lands is possible 
here. In the interior, land is taken by instalments — a bit 
here and a bit there. The chief means employed to this 
end are legal chicanery and litigations, in which all the 
advantages are on the side of the great people, especially if 
they are members of the local administration. Since the 
Emancipation, hundreds of thousands of dessiatines have 
been filched from the peasantry by means of thousands of 
these lawsuits, which differ from open robbery only in name. 
The highest dignitary of the Empire and the noble aristocrats 
themselves have not recoiled before such methods of enrich- 
ment. Count Dmitry Tolstoy, the minister, has despoiled 
the peasants on his Riazan possessions of their land ; Count 
Sheremeteff is doing the same thing with the forty-two vil- 
lages of the Gorbatov district, the inhabitants of which, to 
the number of 8000 souls, were formerly his serfs. 

The Tartars of the Crimea are still struggling for their 
strip of land with Count Mordvinoff. It is no uncommon 
thing for the despotic powers of the Administration to be 
called upon to facilitate the success of these lawsuits. Thus, 
for instance, in No. 163 of the Russian Courier for 1881 
we read that a peasant named Mikhailoff, of Novosilka, a vil- 
lage in the Birutch district, province of Voroneje, was exiled 
by order of the Administration to the province of Archan- 
gel. The offence alleged against him was that he incited 
his fellow-villagers not to pay their taxes. But the real 
facts of the case were as follows : The peasants of the vil- 



PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 115 

lages of Novosilka, Podleslca, and several others had a law- 
suit about some land with the neighboring landlords, Sheg- 
lov, Sinelnikoff, and others. The peasant Mikhailoff was 
chosen by the joint village mirs as their delegate. He com- 
menced operations with great activity, and discovered doc- 
uments proving the injustice of the landlords' claims. They 
thought it advisable to have him removed. 

Cases of downright robbery are not wanting either. The 
method generally adopted is to forge resolutions of the 
mir, ordering that the coveted piece of land shall be yielded 
up. In No. 142 of the Russkia Vedomostt/ for 1881 the 
following curious incident is recorded : In the Fatej dis- 
trict of the province of Kursk a certain lady, Nikitina, sold 
to various persons eighty-three dessiatines of land, which 
she of course stated to be her own, for 215 rubles a dessia- 
tine. But when the new owners came to take possession 
of their property, they found it was occupied by the peas- 
ants of the village, Archangelskoie, who, on hearing the 
claims of the new-comers, expressed the greatest surprise, 
and, flatly refusing to yield the land, drove away the in- 
truders. At this Madame Nikitina applied to the ispravnik, 
who sent the stanovoi to the spot. This gentleman arrived 
at Archangelskoie, and having convened the peasants' mir 
began to admonish them not to offer rebellious resistance. 
The peasants answered unanimously that they had no de- 
sire to rebel against anybody, but that they would not give 
up the land, because it was their own, and they had never 
sold it to Nikitina nor to anybody else, and knew nothing 
about the matter. 

An agreement to that purport existed, however, dated 
September 13, 1878, and was witnessed by a member of 
the Peasants' Court, who gave testimony to the effect that 
he had read this agreement before the mir, and was told 
that everything was correct, after which the deed was ap- 
proved by the Peasants' Court on January 30, 1881, though 



116 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

it bore on the face of it the evidence of being a forgery. 
It did not bear the seal of the Archangelskoie mir, and it 
was signed by a total stranger to the village — the coachman 
of the member in question — and was witnessed as genuine 
by three servants of Madame Nikitina. 

The Golos for the same year reported several similar 
cases as having occurred in the district of Balta, province 
of Podolsk. Here the very men in office actually appro- 
priated a good deal of peasants' land by means of forged 
agreements, which the communal clerks drew up in the 
name of the mir by order of the mediators. One of the 
mediators, in virtue of such an agreement, received from 
the peasants as a present three hundred dessiatines of land, 
which constituted the only means of subsistence for a whole 
village. *^ It is easy to imagine," adds the correspondent, 
" the despair of the peasants when they were told that they 
had * presented ' the mediator with the only piece of arable 
Jand which they possessed.*" 

Instances of such shameless abuses as these are, according 
to the Golos, numerous in the province of Podolsk. 

In other places, according to Novoe Vremya, the com- 
munal clerks drew up fraudulent agreements of this nature 
for their own benefit. In the Starobelsk district, in 1881, 
the Novoaidarsk commune brouo;ht an action asjainst their 
elder, Russenoff, for appropriating 1000 dessiatines of com- 
munal land by means of a forged agreement.* 

These are a few specimens selected from among a heap 
of facts which the temporary relaxation of the censorship 
of the press has enabled the Russian newspapers to publish. 
Since 1882 we have heard no more of them, this class of pub- 
lications being prohibited as inflammatory, and calculated 
to " disturb the public mind." They are considered seditious, 
and would involve severe punishment by the censorship. 



* Golos, 1881. 



PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 117 

With regard to the misappropriation of land, this is cer- 
tainly not likely to diminish by the withdrawal of even 
this slight check. 

The peasants are pretty nearly defenceless against the 
coalition of robbers. The official control is little more 
than mere fiction. The central government depends neces- 
sarily on the information it receives from the tchinovniks, 
i.e., the very accomplices or perpetrators of the robberies. 
And when some tchinovnik of good position, head of some 
board or governor of some province, is not actively com- 
promised by the misdeeds of his subordinates, he screens 
them, and conceals their actions none the less when once 
committed, because he is personally responsible to his su- 
periors for all which happens within his jurisdiction. The 
all-directing, all-controlling autocracy is a myth. The real 
autocracy has long been broken up into a series of petty 
despotisms — a sort of feudalism, which reproduces in mod- 
ern Russia the same phenomenon discovered by the histor- 
ical school of economists as existing in Western Europe in 
the Middle Ages — the conversion of political power into 
economical predominance, of which the robbery of the land 
from the people is the most striking feature. 

At the base of these operations, wherever committed, lies 
brute force. The Russian tchinovniks have at their dis- 
posal the military forces of the State, which they are free to 
use themselves, or to lend to any private person when need- 
ed, to put down any resistance which the peasants may 
offer to the appropriation of their land by any one of the 
methods described above. 

Rebellions of the peasantry, followed by "military exe- 
cutions," having their origin in the embezzlement of land, 
can be counted by the score, though these events are rarely 
honored with more than a short and dry notice in the news- 
paper chronicles of the day. Exceeding few are allowed 
to be thoroughly investigated and discussed. When some 



118 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

particularly gross abuse committed against the peasants 
forces itself upon the public notice and that of the higher 
ministerial circles, it is the deliberate policy of the Govern- 
ment, ministers and Czar included, to hush the matter up 
as much and for as long as possible, because, taking the 
Eussian reading and thinking public as it now is, nothing 
stirs it half so deeply as do affairs of this nature. 

Among dozens of scandalous trials for bribery, embezzle- 
ment of the public funds, plunder in the Ordnance Depart- 
ment, etc., which the Government allowed to be heard in 
public, we remember only one important case — that of the 
Governor of the province of Minsk, General Tokareff, and 
the man associated with him, in which the prosecution, fol- 
lowed by a public trial, was due to the mitiative of the Gov- 
ernment. Other famous "peasant cases," such as Count 
Bobrinsky's, Prince Sherbatoffs, etc., only came to light 
owing to some outrages committed by the peasants, who 
appeared as the prosecuted party, the Government exercis- 
ing to the full its power over the press to prevent these af- 
fairs from being well thrashed out. 

The Tokareff affair is a very instructive one, and is well 
w^orth studying for more reasons than one. It was tried 
before the fifth department of the Senate in November, 
1881, though the offence was committed in 1874. It took 
seven years to make its circuitous way to the court, and it 
was by a mere accident that it was not altogether swamped 
on the way. The trial only began in 181 S, four years after 
the commission of the crime. The chief offender. General 
Tokareff, had by that time been promoted from the gov- 
ernorship of the province of Minsk to the post of Special 
Commissioner of the Red Cross in Bulgaria, and was, to- 
gether with his accomplice. General Loskareff, a member of 
the Ministerial Council. The third hero in the Loghishino 
affair. Colonel Kapger, had been created Knight of the Order 
of Vladimir, and he, too, was pursuing his noble career else- 



PATERNAL GOVERKMENT. 119 

where. The trio would probably have been left unmolested 
to the present day had not two hostile parties at the court 
of St. Petersburg broken out into open strife. 

The Trepoff-Shouvaloff-Potapoff Coalition, all-powerful 
at the court before 1877, received a severe blow by the Zas- 
soulitch trial, which revealed Trepoff s infaraous brutalities. 
His numerous opponents thought the moment most oppor- 
tune for entirely crushing the coalition by a new blow, and 
resolved to disinter the Loghishino affair, which would com- 
promise several of the gang. Four years previously Pota- 
poff, then Governor -general of the Lithuanian provinces, 
had allowed his follower and subordinate, Tokareff, then 
Governor of the province of Minsk, to take several thousand 
dessiatines of land from the peasants of Loghishino. The 
act was committed under peculiarly aggravating circum- 
stances, as the peasants struggled hard for their property. 
They "rebelled" several times, and were put down by a 
liberal allowance of flogging, but did not give up the fight. 
They lodged their complaint with the Senate, and after two 
years of litigation succeeded, in 1876, in gaining their suit. 

The Loghishino peasants, in so far as they recovered their 
property, were much more fortunate than most of their fel- 
low-victims. They never thought, however, of taking further 
action against their former Governor for his past offences. 
But on this occasion Potapoff's adversaries, then in the ma- 
jority in the Ministry, became unusually alive to the people's 
wrongs. They brought the matter before the first depart- 
ment of the Senate. They fared badly in this their first 
attack. The Senate, where Potapoff's party was probably 
well represented, opined that the affair ought to be con- 
cluded by a "reprimand" to Tokareff and his accomplices. 
Then the ministers discussed the matter at a cabinet coun- 
cil, and resolved to report the affair to the Emperor. The 
document wound up with the following remarkably bold 
and novel truth : ** We consider it to be the duty of the 



120 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

Governruent to take severe and impartial legal action in 
cases such as this, of misdemeanor on the part of men in 
oflBce." The Emperor's hand traced the word " certainly " 
opposite this sentence. Nevertheless, ihe PotapofE party for 
three years succeeded in preventing the fulfilment of the Em- 
peror's resolution. The affair was not adjudicated until 1881, 

It was not in vain that the two hostile parties contended 
so bitterly — the one to bring it before the public, the other 
to hush it up. The details of the affair were suflSciently 
revolting to make it an ideal battering-ram. The province 
of Minsk, of which Tokareff was governor, forms a part of 
the vast region to which converged the greed of the Rus- 
sian tchinovniks, until they discovered still richer prey in 
the enormous eastern outskirts of the Empire. After the 
suppression of the Polish insurrection of 18G3-64, the Gov- 
ernment confiscated a total area of 60,914 dessiatines of 
land belonging to such landlords as had been implicated in 
patriotic conspiracies. These spoils of the vanquished the 
Government threw as prey to its oflScials, and especially to 
the blood-hounds who had helped to quench the insurrec- 
tion — as the hunter throws the remains of the skinned 
beast to his dogs. 

This rich booty did not suflSce to satisfy the appetites of 
the crew. When the best of the landed property had been 
appropriated among them, the tchinovniks began to plun- 
der the peasants, according to the common methods as prac- 
tised elsewhere. One of these tchinovniks was the Govern- 
or of the province of Minsk himself. General Tokareff, who 
obtained from the Governor-general of the region, Potapoff, 
an estate of 3000 dessiatines, yielding an income of about 
9000 rubles a year, for the sum of 14,000 rubles, payable 
over twenty years. Tokareff's vassal, Sevastianoff, chairman 
of the Local Board of Minsk, carved out this estate for him 
from the land which belonged by right to the peasants of 
Loghishino. 



PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 121 

It is evident that both SevastianoiBE and TokarefE commit- 
ted this act of flagrant robbery in full cognizance of the 
fact, though they denied it before the tribunal. The Log- 
hishino peasants had been in possession of the land claimed 
by Tokareff from time immemorial, and had never paid an 
iota of rent to the Local Board. This could hardly be ig- 
nored by the managers of the local estates, more especially 
as Loghishino is only twenty-five miles distant from Minsk. 
In addition to this, the peasants could show ample docu- 
mental evidence in support of their rights, the best proof of 
which is the eventual success of their suit before the Senate 
in 1876: a charter from the King of Poland, and a ukase 
confirming their rights from the Russian Senate. On be- 
ing apprised of the impending transfer of their land to 
their Governor, they sent their deputies to the latter to ex- 
plain to him how the matter stood, and at the same time 
forwarded the senatorial ukase to Sevastianoff. The Gov- 
ernor, however, refused to listen to anything. As to the 
ukase sent to Sevastianoff, it mysteriously " disappeared " at 
the ofiice, and could never be recovered ; in other words, it 
was stolen either by Sevastianoff on behalf of the Governor, 
or by his direction. When the Ministry, to which the Log- 
hishino peasants appealed upon the failure of their applica- 
tions at Minsk, applied for information at Minsk upon the 
subject, to the Minsk Local Government Board, Sevastianoff 
replied that the peasants' claims were void of any foundation, 
and that the land was unquestionably State property, and 
that therefore there could be no legal obstacle to its transfer. 

The Governor-general himself did not lie idle. On learn- 
ing that five peasants had been deputed to St. Petersburg 
to push forward the Loghishino suit, Tokareff reported to 
the Ministry that these deputies were revolutionary agita- 
tors. They were accordingly at once locked up, and with- 
out further trial exiled to the northern Littoral, as is the 
custom in such cases with our Administration. 



122 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

Having tlius removed all obstacles, Tokareff was, in 1874, 
formally invested with the rights of ownership over the 
Loghishino estate; but when he sent his agents to collect 
the rents, the peasants refused to pay, and drove away the 
police. Twenty-six peasants were arrested and thrown into 
the Minsk prison. Tokareffs next move was to send small 
detachments of troops against the village, to compel obedi- 
ence and levy the money. The peasants, however, persisted 
in their refusal. When the troops were drawn up before 
them they tried to force the line, but were driven back at 
the butt-end of the musket. The soldiers then fired a vol- 
ley with blank cartridges, and withdrew without resorting 
to more drastic measures, the officer in command not being 
anxious, probably, to obtain a cross or promotion for the 
putting down of " civil enemies.'' 

On the first news of the failure of the expedition— /owr 
days before the official report reached him — Tokareff hast- 
ened to telegraph to St. Petersburg that the Loghishino 
peasants had broken out into open rebellion, and had repulsed 
the troops. Such a grave emergency requiring strong and 
prompt measures, the Ministry sent a special commissioner 
from St. Petersburg — General Loshkareff — with most exten- 
sive powers. On October 25, 1874, the general arrived at 
Minsk, received from Tokareff one battalion of soldiers with 
250 Cossacks, and marched against the " rebels." 

In the subsequent, most revolting, part of the proceedings 
the leading actor is Colonel Kapger, the ispravnik of Minsk, 
whom Tokareff attached to the expedition quite unlawfully. 
The duty of assisting the military in compelling obedience 
from the peasantry belonged of right to the ispravnik of 
Pinsk, Zolotnizky, because the Loghishino commune was in 
his district. Tokareff did not want to trust an affair of 
such personal interest to himself to the local police. Kap- 
ger was, under the circumstances, a much fitter person, and 
was therefore attached to the expedition ** as an experienced 



PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 123 

and capable pollce-ofBcer, to try and persuade the peasants 
to submit to the law," as the mealy-mouthed Governor ex- 
plained in his own justification, 

Kapger did not disappoint the expectations of his chief. 
His first precaution was to stow away in the Loghishino 
police-station {stan) several cart-loads of birch-rods. When 
this order had been executed, he arrived, on October 31st, 
at about mid-day, at the village, and appeared before the 
peasants in the public square, escorted by two policemen. 
He then began to abuse and vilify the villagers for their 
ill-behavior, and announced that " an army was advancing 
on them with a general who was authorized to bury them 
alive, to flog them to death, to shoot them, to do with them 
as he would with rebels — anything he chose — if they would 
not at once submit." 

The frightened people said they would submit, and hast- 
ened to send three deputies forward to meet and propitiate 
the terrible general. They met him at a few miles' distance 
from the village, and said that they submitted and would 
pay rent to General Tokareff. This did not, however, stay 
the advance of Loshkareff, who entered Loghishino at the 
head of his troops at night-time, and immediately ordered 
the Cossacks to invest the village from all parts, " lest any 
one might escape." A second deputation then came before 
him, bringing the traditional " bread and salt," in token of 
welcome and obedience. But the general said he would 
not accept these offerings from " rebels " until they had re- 
pented and fulfilled the claims of their landlord, who de- 
manded about 500 rubles as a part of the rent for 1874, 
and 5000 for the arrears owing to him for 1873. 

This claim was a most impudent extortion. Tokareff 
had only been invested with the right of ownership in 
1874. Any claim on the rent for the previous year was 
therefore absolutely illegal. On being questioned on this 
point by the tribunal, Tokareff explained that though he was 



124 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

forraally invested with the right of ownership in 1874, still 
it had been reported to the chairman of the Local Board 
(his friend and accomplice SevastianofE) that the Loghishino 
peasants were informed a year before by a tchinovnik of 
the Minsk courts of justice (who had neither juridical nor 
even administrative powers over them) that they must hand 
over one-third of the harvest to Tokareff. Then Stanovoi 
Trikovsky made a valuation, unassisted even by the local 
surveyor, and most generously adjudicated full 12,000 ru- 
bles to his chief, who reduced the sum to 5500 rubles. 
TCus were the Loghishino peasants not merely robbed of 
their land, but had to present Tokareff with the capital 
which he had to disburse in the transaction ! 

The poor people could not, however, afford to ponder on 
the injustice of their case in the face of this array of bay- 
onets and Cossacks. They submitted, pleading only for a 
short respite in which to sell some of their goods in order 
to make up the required sum. No respite was granted 
them. The general told them in firm but moderate lan- 
guage, as became so high an official, that they must collect 
and deposit in his hands the sum of 5500 rubles within 
forty-eight hours, otherwise he would compel them to pay 
the whole sum of 12,000 rubles. 

On this he retired, and shut himself up in the house as- 
signed to him, leaving the command to the ispravnik Kap- 
ger. This officer went at once to the root of the matter, 
and showed to the full extent how " experienced " and 
" capable " he was in fulfilling the mission assigned to him 
by the Governor. He refused to wait for the money even 
until the next morning. He rushed upon the peasants as 
one possessed, abusing them, calling them names, stamp- 
ing his foot, boxing them on the ears, and shouting, " The 
rods ; bring the rods ! I will flog you to death ! I will 
flay you alive !" 

He did not want the peasants to distribute the contribu- 



PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 125 

tion demanded according to their means. lie made short 
work of all these formalities by assigning twenty-five rubles 
as the amount to be paid by each of the 233 households. 
Those who said they had not the money and could not pay 
at once were sent to the police-station, and there flogged 
until they promised to find the money, selling their goods 
to the Jews of the village for a song, or borrowing from 
them the money at an interest of from one and a half to 
three per cent, a week. As the Loghishino peasants were 
poor people, according to the statements of the policemen 
themselves, many suffered very severely. One of the wit- 
nesses, the deputy Korolevitch, testified that the peasant 
Malokhovsky was beaten so savagely that he had never 
since fully recovered. He was a non-commissioned officer, 
and had only just returned from his regiment. He had 
had no time to get settled in his home, and was very poor. 
When summoned before Kapger, who was sitting at the 
police-station, he gave him full particulars as to why he was 
unable to pay the twenty-five rubles. He was conducted 
to the execution-chamber, and there flogged by two police- 
men under the personal superintendence of Kapger. After 
some time Kapger stopped the flogging, and asked whether 
he would bring the money or not. On receiving the same 
answer as before, he ordered the men to flog him once 
more. When he was again released, he said to Kapger that 
" while in the Czar's service he had never undergone the 
shame of corporal punishment.'' For this " impertinence " 
Kapger ordered him to be flogged for the third time. But 
even after that Malokhovsky brought no money, which was 
paid for him by the mir. 

Lukashevitch, an old man of sixty-nine years, begged the 
ispravnik to give him a short respite ; but the latter struck 
him in the face twice so violently that he could not keep 
his feet. Then he ordered him to the flogging-room, where 
he was flogged three times, Kapger telling his men to strike 



126 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

more heavily, and asking the victim whether he would bring 
the money now. 

Many fainted under the ordeal. Kapger himself super- 
intended the execution of the sentences, giving his men 
instructions as to how to use the rods so as to cause the 
victims to suffer more acutely. None were spared. The 
deputy Korolevitch testified to the fact that Kapger de- 
manded the money even from a blind old beggar, Adam 
Tatarevitch ; and when he said he had no money, Kapger 
struck the poor fellow in the face, and was about to have 
him flogged, but Tatarevitch went to the village, and came 
back with ten rubles he had collected in Christ's name from 
his fellow-villao'ers. 

The subordinates treated the people with the bestial bru- 
tality of invaders. A retired soldier, Chechotka by name, 
stated on oath that the ispravnik's men came to fetch him 
to the police-station in the dead of night, about twelve 
o'clock; that while he was dressing himself one Cossack 
struck his pregnant wife on the back with his horsewhip 
so cruelly that she fainted, and the next day miscarried. 

By such means as these Kapger levied in two days the 
whole sum of 5500 rubles, which were duly forwarded to 
the Governor. The troops retired, and General Loshkareff 
returned to St. Petersburg, to report to the Emperor that 
order was restored in Loghishino, and that the rebellion 
had been put down without the use of fire-arms or amj 
violence^ thanks to the courage and ability of the ispravnik 
Kapger, who had succeeded in persuading the mob to sub- 
mit to the just claims of their landlord ! Loshkareff was 
rewarded by the thanks of the Emperor, while Kapger was 
decorated with one of the highest military orders.* 

This is a fair sample of the truthfulness of the official 
reports, and the whole affair is typical of the style in which 

* Porcader, 1881, No. 330-340. 



PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 127 

the military carried the law into effect. Of course such 
utter scamps as Colonel Kapger are rare, even in the ranks 
of the Russian police. Few ispravniks would strike a blind 
old man in the face, or take actual pleasure in the operation 
of flogging ; but out of the seven hundred ispravniks and 
the two thousand stanovois of the Empire, there are hardly 
a dozen who during their term of service have not had to 
"put down" several of these ** rebellions" among the peas- 
antry, generated by the same feelings of despair, and sub- 
dued by the same methods of military pressure and whole- 
sale flogging, as in the examples cited above. 



CHAPTER III. 

After the beasts of prey, the vermin. Naturalists say 
that the most mischievous enemies of unprotected and 
primitive man are not the big carnivora with whom he has 
to fight now and then on unequal terms, but the lower 
forms of creation — the insects, the mice, rats, wild birds, 
and other small pilferers which overwhelm him by their 
numbers and omnipresence. 

I will not venture to say that the same holds good with 
respect to the two classes of parasites which our paternal 
Government has set on the moujiks. It is beyond doubt 
that both are extremely obnoxious. As to the question 
which of the two is the more so, it is rather diflScult to 
give a positive answer. 

The upper police and administrative officials — the tchin- 
ovniks — unquestionably commit enormous material damage 
among the people. But as they come into immediate con- 
tact with the peasantry on comparatively rare occasions, 
they cannot have much effect upon the moral side of the 
people's life. With the inferior police the reverse is the 
case. It must be granted that even as a question of finance 
they are a very heavy additional burden to the people. The 
5744 uriadniks (rural constables) created in 1878, and con- 
stantly added to since, represent an outlay of 2,600,000 
rubles a year, or about twice the sum the State Exchequer 
spends on primary education. - 

As every uriadnik extracts from the rural population sub- 
jected to him, by bribes, black-mail, and other devices, on an 
average at least twice as much as he receives in salary, the 
total cost of this amiable institution represents a good round 



PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 129 

sum, for which a much better use might be found than 
the support of this horde of blackguards. But monetary 
damages become almost trivialities by the side of the vexa- 
tions, insults, petty, every-day tyranny and demoralization 
which are poured into our villages by these guardians of the 
peace — unique of their kind. 

To give the ring of truth to these strange statements, we 
have only to draw a sketch of these uriadniks, and how they 
came to exist. 

When the Nihilist rebellion first burst forth, it assumed, 
as is well known, the aspect of a vast agrarian agitation in 
favor of the restitution of the land to its tillers. As the 
same aspirations, though obscured by the mists of mo- 
narchical superstitions, were smouldering among the whole 
of our agricultural class, the Government at once took the 
greatest alarm. 

The fierce hunting of the Nihilist began through all Rus- 
sia. The peasants did not rise in arms at the voice of the 
agitators, perplexed, bewildered by the unheard-of appeal ; 
but in the relentless chase after the Nihilists they kept 
aloof, and often assisted the propagandists to escape from 
the hands of their persecutors. The active part in the 
drama was played by the local officers of the State, the 
police, the stanovois, the ispravniks, and the volunteer spies, 
who were furnished by the newly born class of rural usu- 
rers, plunderers of the people and upstarts, who had fished in 
troubled waters. But in a well-regulated autocracy nothing 
can be left to private enterprise, least of all the craft of a 
spy. As to the local agents of the State police, they were 
so surcharged with so many other duties, and had under 
their supervision districts so vast, as to render an effective 
and minute survey impossible. 

In 1878 a force of rural constabulary was created, and 
from that moment commenced the Babylonian captivity of 
the Russian peasantry to the police. 
9 



130 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

The uriadniks were created in order to strengthen the 
hands of the rural police, headed by the ispravniks and 
their assistants the stanovois. The uriadniks are therefore 
under the command of these officers, in their quality of 
general police-agents ; but like the gendarmerie created by 
the Emperor Nicholas I. for the benefit of the townspeople, 
their rural brothers are placed in a peculiar position. 

The duties of the uriadniks are extensive and manifold. 
They are the masters of the village communes in the same 
sense as the governors are called the masters of their re- 
spective provinces. Besides the function of chief of the 
communal police, they unite in their persons those of sani- 
tary inspectors of roads and buildings, and statistical agents, 
etc. They poke their noses into everything, prying into 
private households, and enforcing various prescriptions in- 
tended by the idle bureaucratic imagination for the benefit 
of the moujiks. Thus forsooth they must see that the 
peasant's house be ventilated and the windows opened, 
even during the winter-time, when people have hardly fuel 
enough to keep the hard frost out of the door. To secure 
purity of air they are bound to prevent the keeping of ma- 
nure in open courts near the houses, when in the whole of 
Russia not a single peasant, save a few German settlers, has 
an artificial dung-pit. The same solicitude for the stupid 
moujiks, who cannot feel the disadvantage of keeping cat- 
tle within their dwellings, inspired the prohibition of that 
bad practice, though the young cattle would otherwise be 
frozen in the courts, as the peasants have no w^arm stables. 

Neither is the exterior of the village neglected. The 
uriadnik must see that the streets be kept clean, though in 
the villages there is no trace of a pavement, and the streets 
during the spring and the autumn, six months out of the 
twelve, are knee-deep in mud. A lot of other equally be- 
nevolent and equally stupid prescriptions exist, relating to 
food, the construction of the houses, gardening, etc., all of 



PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 131 

which are fair examples of bureaucratic perspicacity and 
knowledge of the things with which they have to deal. 

All this is amusing, but to an outsider only. To the 
peasants it is a very serious matter. The more absurd the 
order is, the easier is it for a uriadnik to convert it into a 
means of extortion and a source of abuse, owing to the ex- 
orbitant, the monstrous powers with which the uriadniks 
are armed in their quality of political blood-hounds. 

Only a despotic government fully conscious of its many 
sins could in a fit of well-grounded fear put such powers 
into the hands of subordinate agents. They can enter any- 
body's house at any time of the day or of the night, exam- 
ine everything, and question anybody as to any actions and 
purposes which may seem to them suspicious. They have 
the right of arresting and taking into custody any citizen 
of the district at their own discretion, without first obtaining 
any special warrant or authorization. The elders and the 
communal police are bound to arrest and to march off any 
prisoner at the bidding of the uriadniks. 

Now let us ask what are the moral and intellectual guar- 
antees offered by these people, intrusted with such exten- 
sive powers over the liberty, honor, and property of their 
fellow-citizens ? Whence does this horde of village pro- 
consuls spring ? 

A uriadnik receives a salary of £20 a year, which, taking 
into account the cheapness of living in a Russian village, 
would represent from £40 to £50 at the English rate of 
value. We cannot, therefore, expect to see well-educated 
people in their ranks, quite apart from the aversion felt in 
Russia by all men of self-respect to the acceptance of any 
post connected with the police. Moreover, the considera- 
ble amount of physical exertion required from the uriad- 
niks as a rule excludes the petty tchinovniks. 

But as the uriadniks' duties imply a considerable amount 
of legal chicanery, they cannot be recruited at random from 



132 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

among simple folk, such as retired soldiers or non-commis- 
sioned officers. The uriadniks are chiefly picked up from 
among the dregs of the Government servants of the towns, 
and the outcasts of the intellectual professions : scribes out 
of employment, petty police-officers turned out of their 
posts for bribery or drunkenness, and so forth. In spite of 
this, this rabble, which had to be watched and watched like 
a host of pickpockets in a crowded room, were exempted 
by the Czar's Government, to a quite exceptional degree, 
from any control whatever. The Russian press, as is well 
known, is not allowed to indulge overmuch in the expos- 
ure of the abuses and misdeeds of any of the members of 
the official hierarchy ; but to attack a gendarme, a political 
spy, any officer connected with the defence of the autocracy 
against its civil enemies, is considered almost as a personal 
insult to the Czar. 

The uriadniks, in their capacity of rural gendarmes, were 
on their creation granted the same immunity. The press 
was strictly prohibited from publishing any exposure of 
their vices. This fact, however strange it may sound, was 
publicly disclosed three years later by several Russian news- 
papers. 

In the Zemstro newspaper of December 31, 1880, the fol- 
]owing details are explicitly given by the responsible edit- 
ors : " At the founding of the uriadniks all possible care 
was taken to present them in the most favorable light to 
the public. To this end the Official Messenger and the 
official papers, which exist in every province, published, by 
order of the minister, a number of reports tending to show 
their activity, sometimes put into the form of special nar- 
ratives, sometimes in the form of statistical tables ; while, 
on the other hand, shortly after the law of 9th of June, 
1878 (instituting the uriadniks), had received due attention, 
namely, in September of the same year, the editors of all 
the newspapers and periodicals were ordered not to allow 



PATERNAL GOVERKMENT. 133 

any censure of the activity of the police to appear in their 
respective columns, nor to discredit it' by exposing any of 
its abuses. In case of the transo^ression of this order the 
delinquents were threatened with most stringent penalties. 
Thus did the uriadniks become quite inviolable to the press." 

It may be added that the Government defended these its 
Benjamins, charged with protecting it against agrarian revo- 
lution — even against their immediate superiors in office, the 
stanovois and ispravniks. 

When this herd of 5744 brutal invaders, scattered among 
the Russian villages, began their exploits, even the not par- 
ticularly scrupulous law-abiding gentlemen of the police felt 
that they were bound to interfere. Numbers of uriadniks 
were turned out, or at least driven from one district to an- 
other, by way of disciplinary punishment. In order to sup- 
press this flagrant proof of their worthlessness, the Ministry 
of the Interior placed General Makoff at their head, and 
expressed marked disapprobation to the police authorities 
wherever there had been frequent expulsions, " calculated 
to diminish the prestige of the uriadniks in the eyes of the 
peasantry." No wonder that the uriadniks grew so con- 
ceited with their self-importance that in the province of 
Poltava, when one of them was fined eleven rubles by the 
magistrate, he flew into such a passion as to inveigh against 
the magistrate in open court, and to threaten him with a 
" protocol." 

We have dwelt on these details at the risk of wearying 
our reader, because they prove- to demonstration the fal- 
lacy of a very common prejudice concerning the Russian 
Government. It is supposed that the educated class only 
are subjected to police tyranny. This is not so. Our 
Government is free from any taint of partiality. When- 
ever it smells some danger to its own skin, all " the dear 
children," both peasants and the well-to-do, arc dealt with 
on exactly the same footing. 



134 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

The quite anomalous position created for these guardians 
of the public safety could lead to only one consequence. 
The uriadniks became the scourge of our villages, the terror 
of tlie peasants, the chief perpetrators of such violence and 
extortion as had never been heard of before. " Being per- 
fect strangers to the village," says the Zemstro newspaper, 
"they despise the peasantry, as all upstarts do. They 
look on the rustics subjected to their control as invaders 
do upon a conquered people, on whom they may work 
their will. The extortions of the uriadniks in their inso- 
lence recall the rapacity of the soldiery. Not only are pri- 
vate individuals compelled to propitiate these uriadniks 
with bribes, but whole communes are saddled with illegal 
tribute. And such things happen not only in the remote 
corners of the vast Empire, but in the neighborhood of St. 
Petersburg itself." 

In view of these experiences the zemstvos have repeatedly 
petitioned for the abolition of the uriadniks. At the sit- 
ting of the St. Petersburg zemstvo on the iVth of January, 
1881, the deputies expressed their opinion in the following 
strong terms : " The magistrates Volkoff and Shakeef do 
aJBSrm most positively that the uriadniks are simply a nui- 
sance to the people. They are doing no good, and are un- 
able to do any good, being chiefly recruited from among 
half-illiterate clerks who are out of employment, and who 
take a distorted view of their duties." Baron Korf spoke 
to the same effect* 

During the short Liberal respite of 1881 there w^as hardly 
one periodical, save Mr. Katkoff's Moscow Gazette^ which 
did not pour out before its readers whole volumes of accu- 
mulated facts about the exploits of the uriadniks, varying 
in their nature from the too free use of the fist or whip to 
the most heinous and revolting crimes. 

We will first open a page in the public career of a cer- 
tain Makoorine, uriadnik of the province of Samara, a jolly 



PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 135 

fellow, though somewhat excited and rough when in his 
cups. One fine morning, in the autumn of 1881, he ar- 
rived at the village of Vorony Kust, where a meeting was 
being held in the public hall. Here all his friends were 
met together, and among them Chaibool the Rich, a Tartar 
peasant. Having some business to transact with the uriad- 
nib, Chaibool invited him, together with several common 
friends, to take a glass in his house. The meeting over, 
therefore, they left the hall in several cars. In opening the 
gate they let out a pig. The pig took it into its head to 
run after the uriadnik, though *' Chaibool did his best to 
call it back." They crossed the village and reached the 
fields, the pig still running after the uriadnik's car, with 
the evident intention of escorting him up to the house of 
his host. The rural magnate took it as a malicious insult 
to his dignity on the part of the beast, and shot the pig 
dead. 

After having taken their refreshment with Chaibool the 
Rich they returned back to the village a little elevated. 
There they met with a publican, the owner of the killed 
pig, who asked the uriadnik to pay for the beast. At such 
audacity Makoorine lost his temper, swore, boasted of his 
official importance, and, according to the unanimous testi- 
mony of all the witnesses, said that '* he, the uriadnik, had 
the right to shoot not only pigs, but men too, there being a 
law to that effect." A retired soldier, John Kirilow, who 
was present, observed that he also had served the Czar, but 
had never heard of such a law. Without wasting words 
on his adversary, the uriadnik flew on Kirilow, knocked 
him down, and then dragged him into the court, and, call- 
ing his coachman to his assistance, struck Kirilow again. 

The guardian of public order was, for this breach of the- 
peace, condemned to six weeks' imprisonment; but as it 
was discovered that there were no less than fifteen similar 
suits pending against him, he was put under police super- 



136 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

vision until such time as the verdict was pronounced on 
his accumulated offences. 

Another uriadnik, that of Malo-Archangelsk, at the time 
of the Carnival, arrived in the village, "drunk as a fiddler." 
On entering the public hall he behaved with gross impro- 
priety. He cut the table-cloth to pieces with his sabre, and 
reviled the members with most opprobrious names. When 
some persons tried to get him to listen to reason he flew 
at them, brandishing his sabre, and drove them all, both 
guests and owners, out of the building. 

In Ivanovka the uriadnik, on entering the house of a 
peasant to make an inspection as to whether it was kept 
clean, saw a young calf tied to a table-leg in the kitchen.- 
At such slovenliness the uriadnik lost his temper, and after 
having reviled the women who were spinning in the other 
room, as best he could, he drew his sabre and cut the calf 
to pieces. 

In Poroobejka a uriadnik came upon a woman making 
dough. She was in a hurry to make the bread for her 
household, and had left the floor unswept. Exasperated by 
this negligence, the uriadnik, after giving the woman a se- 
vere scolding, overthrew the kneading-trough before the 
woman's eyes, and upset the dough on to the dirty floor. 

In Dmitrovka the uriadnik Lastochkin met a wedding 
procession, going with songs, according to custom, from one 
relative of the newly married couple to another. He or- 
dered them to disperse at once, though the elder of the 
village was among them. One of the guests. Easily Kareff, 
remonstrated against such interference, explaining that they 
were celebrating a wedding. The uriadnik, as his only 
answer, struck Kareff twice with his whip. 

The crowd got into a rage ; they flew at the uriadnik, and 
handled him roughly. He would, perhaps, have fared yet 
worse had he not taken refuge in the parson's house. 

On hearingr of the disturbance the whole villaire assem- 



PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 137 

bled round the parsonage, clamoring to have the uriadnik 
delivered up to them, and it was only thanks to the sooth- 
ing influence of the parson that the uriadnik escaped lynch- 
ing. A protocol was drawn up about the " insult offered 
to the uriadnik," and Kareff was condemned to seven days' 
imprisonment. 

All these examples, given by eye - witnesses to a corre- 
spondent of the Zemstro newspaper, refer to one small dis- 
trict alone. None of them is of any particular impor- 
tance, but they contain much local coloring, and convey a 
pretty fair idea as to the moral physiognomy and distinc- 
tive attributes of the new type of our village magnates. 

In one place the uriadnik fired into a crowd of unarmed 
people ; in another, charged a crowd busied in quenching a 
fire, on horseback, with sword and whip ; in a third case, a 
freshly built peasant's house was demolished, under the pre- 
text that it was not constructed " according to the regula- 
tions ;" in a fourth, the uriadnik assaulted and inflicted severe 
bodily injuries on a church-warden for not having appeared 
before him with sufficient alacrity when sent for. 

In the Bogorodsk district the uriadnik was in the habit 
of stealing the peasants' oats for his own horse by night. 
When caught, on one occasion, in the act, so far was he 
from being put out of countenance that he threatened the 
owners with imprisonment, and then, having sent his errand- 
boy to fetch his sabre and revolver, declared himself to be 
engaged "in the execution of his duty," and triumphantly 
made his way through the assembled throng. The isprav- 
nik, on receiving complaints from the peasants, ordered the 
stanovoi to investigate the case. The accusation proved 
true, but the uriadnik was not even discharged, and continued 
to hold his office as guardian of the public safety in peace. 

In one of the towns of the province of Poltava, dur- 
ing fair-time, the uriadniks formed themselves into a body, 
which wandered through the town, and amused themselves 



138 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

by tearing off the ear-rings and necklaces of the peasant- 
women, who came to the fair adorned in their best national 
attire, alleging that the national costume had been prohib- 
ited by the Czarina's ukase. 

We will close this list, which might be prolonged ad libl' 
turn, by mentioning some of those cases w^here these rural 
despots, accustomed to impunity, have given vent to their 
low instincts in acts which recall the worst features of the 
days of serfdom. 

In the Mogilev district of the province of Podol, Daniel 
Yasitsky, the uriadnik of the village of Chemeris, after hav- 
ing for a long time and with impunity distinguished himself 
by the extortion of money from the innocent, and black- 
mail from such thieves as were caught in the act, whom he 
was in the habit of setting free by his own authority — this 
Daniel Yasitsky indulged in the following practical joke: 
By threats and blows he compelled two of his subordi- 
nates — peasants' ^* decurions " — to harness themselves into a 
car and drag him to the town of Bar, distant about four 
miles. Yasitsky \vas simply dismissed. 

Another still more revolting case was tried before the St. 
Petersburg tribunal, April 23, 1886. 

Gerassimoff, the uriadnik of the village Borki, in the Pe- 
terhof district, was convicted of having subjected several 
peasants to the torture in order to extort from them confes- 
sions about a robbery committed by unknown persons. A 
peasant named Marakine, and two brothers of the name of 
Antonoff, were all three kept hanging for several hours on a 
sort of improvised strappado. Stripped of their clothes, 
and barefoot, their hands were tied behind their backs by a 
rope, which was then passed over a rail, fixed high up in the 
wall of an ice-cellar. The bodies of these unfortunate men 
were then raised above the level of the ice ground, which 
they could hardly touch with the tips of their toes. 

The uriadnik now and then appeared, requesting them to 



PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 139 

confess, and dealing them blows on the head on their re- 
fusal to comply with his wishes. One of the three victims, 
the peasant Marakine, on the way to the torture-chamber 
was subjected to other treatment no less infamous. The 
testimony of the elder of the village is particularly char- 
acteristic : " Gerassimoff, the uriadnik, came to me and 
asked whether I could lend him thirty men. * For what pur- 
pose do you need so many V I asked. Then he answered, 
pointing to Marakine, ' I mean to make this fellow run the 
gantlet.' " To this the witness made reply that he would 
never permit such things to be done to the peasants of his 
commune. Then Marakine's hands and legs were tied, and 
he was fastened by the legs to the back of the car, his body 
on the ground. The horse was then made to run, and Mar- 
akine was dragged in the mud for about ten yards. Then 
Gerassimoff said to the elder, " Bring me some straw, we 
will burn him a little ;" but witness refused to bring it to 
him. 

Gerassimoff was found guilty, and sentenced to one yearns 
penal servitude. So lenient is the Russian law towards 
crimes against humanity, reserving its ferocity for those who 
are working on behalf of humanity. 

Such barbarities, which, had they been committed by a 
Turkish officer, would have set European diplomacy on 
fire, are of course exceptional, though it would be illogical 
to suppose them unique. 

From the opposite end of the Empire we hear of things 
which are no better — indeed, if anything, rather worse. It 
was proved by judicial inquiry before the Kisheneff tribu- 
nal that in the Orgheef district the uriadnik and the com- 
munal authorities had for a long time used various instru- 
ments of torture in their judicial proceedings. One of 
these, called hutuk^ figured on the table of " material evi- 
dences" in the court. It is a wooden instrument, composed 
of two sliding beams, which serve for screwing the feet of 



140 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

the culprit between them. These abominations were not 
unknown to the police. The matter was, however, only 
brought before the tribunal because the authorities arrested 
the wrong man, on whom they used the butuk with such 
cruelty that the victim was crippled for life. 

The patience of our people is great — too great, indeed, 
but not unlimited. Since the uriadniks have been intro- 
duced, the number of so-called offences against officials in 
the execution of their duty has considerably increased 
among the rural classes. The first official statistics bearing 
upon the subject show, for instance, that in 1877-81, in 
the district included under the St. Petersburg jurisdiction 
(embracing several provinces), the peasants form 93 per 
cent, of such offenders, while the privileged classes supply 
only 7 per cent. In the Kharkon region the former furnish 
96 percent., the latter only 4 per cent. In the rural districts, 
of such offences, all refer to the uriadniks or to the rural 
stanovois. Thus, to the lawlessness of the police must be 
accorded at least the merit of instructing our peasants a little 
in the art of taking the law into their own hands, which 
may, perhaps, ultimately serve some useful purpose. 



HARD TIMES. 



CHAPTER I. 

The outcry for more land was the first sound the ears of 
educated Russians were able to catch in the confused din 
of voices which rose from the masses below. Our moujiks 
were never tired of repeating the same requests again and 
aorain. 

It was in vain that the Government, in order to satisfy 
their greed after land, offered them various cheap make- 
shifts. The moujiks displayed a stoical indifference to 
these advances, and went on endlessly repeating the same 
refrain about land. 

What could be supposed to satisfy the peasants more 
than the condonation of the arrears in the taxes? or the 
reduction of one ruble per head of the annual land-pur- 
chase payments? But even to these offers the peasants 
turned a deaf ear. When spoken to about the condonation 
of the arrears, says Engelhardt, they would answer, " The 
solvent payers, will only regret their former punctuality, 
that is all. Condonation or no condonation, those who 
have nothing can pay nothing. The present arrears con- 
doned, fresh ones will be made next year, since they cannot 
pay." They will point to such and such villages which are 
not in arrears, and are in no need of condonation, " because 
they were not wronged with regard to their land." 

As regards the reduction of the land-purchase money, 



142 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTKY. 

they showed the same wooden insensibility. "One ruble 
per head," they said, " mounts up to a large sum of money 
to the Crown, but to us separately it is a trifle, hardly per- 
ceptible at all. We moujiks are quite ready to pay our 
dues, if only we can have more of our dear land." 

The land is the object of the peasants' day-dreams and 
longings, as well as of a touching, almost filial respect and 
devotion. In the peasants' songs and in their ordinary 
speeches the usual epithet applied to it is "mother," or "lit- 
tle mother." The whole tenor of peasant life in Russia 
suggests the idea that the chief aim of their existence is 
to serve the land, and not to use it for their own advantage. 

The Russian moujiks are, as a rule, quite unconcerned as 
to what is called " comfort." They seem to consider a 
Spartan mode of life and indifference to hardships a good 
deal in the light of an attribute of man. In Eastern Rus- 
sia and the Volga provinces they scoff at their neighbors, 
the peasants of Tartar origin, who are fond of soft bedding 
and dainties, and who ride in long-shafted buggies, which 
rock them as a cradle might, instead of suffering their bow- 
els to be jolted out in the traditional Russian telegue, I 
will not cite as an example the life of the poorer class of 
peasants. Among them privations are unavoidable. That 
which bears particularly on our present object is the life of 
such peasants as could afford to live quite comfortably if 
they chose. 

If you enter the house of a notoriously rich peasant, 
whose granary is brimful of corn, who keeps half a dozen 
horses in his stables, and who has probably in some remote 
corner under the floor a jugful of bright silver rubles, laid 
aside against a rainy day, you will be surprised at the ex- 
treme simplicity, nay, squalor, of his household arrange- 
ments. All peasants, the rich as well as the poor, live, with 
very few exceptions, in the same narrow peasant's izha, 
these homesteads presenting a square of fifteen to twenty 



HARD TIMES. 143 

feet in length and width. In this space, divided into one 
or two rooms, both children and grown-up people are all 
huddled together. The quantity of air afforded for respi- 
ration is so puzzlingly small that our hygienists are forced 
to admit the endosmical action of the walls as the only 
hypothesis which will account for the fact that these peo- 
ple are not literally suffocated. 

" Furniture " is a word which can be used only in its 
broad philosophical sense when applied to the dwellings of 
these people. They really are not possessed of any beyond 
a big unpolished table of the simplest pattern, which stands 
in the place of honor in a corner under the ikons^ or images 
of saints, and some long wooden benches, about two feet 
deep, running along the walls. These benches are used 
for sitting on in the daytime and for sleeping on at night. 
When the family is a large one, some of its members at 
bedtime mount to an upper tier of shelves, which line the 
wall, like hammocks in a ship's cabin. Nothing bearing 
the likeness of a mattress is to be seen ; a few worn-out 
rugs are thinly spread over the bare wood of the benches 
or on the floor, and that is all. The e very-day coat just 
taken off serves as a blanket. Beds are a luxury hardly 
known and very little appreciated by the Russian moujiks. 
Even in the peasants' hotels, the dvors on the chief com- 
mercial highways of the interior, frequented by the rich 
freight-carriers, a plentiful and luxurious table is kept, but 
nothing but bare benches in the way of beds are to be 
found. In the winter the large top of the stone oven is 
the favorite sleeping-place, and is generally reserved for the 
ciders, so that they may keep their old bones warm. 

All the peasants dress in pretty much the same manner, 
which is extremely simple : no undergarment, a shirt of 
homespun tick or of chintz, sometimes of red fustian — this 
last is very much appreciated — and light cotton or linen, 
trousers. The richer wear boots, which are used by the, 



144 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

poorer sort only on great occasions. The "bast" shoes, 
which were used in the Middle Ages in Europe, and have 
since disappeared, are in common use among the bulk of 
the great Russian peasants. In the winter a kind of home- 
made woollen boot is preferred, and the long woollen home- 
spun coat' is replaced by a sheepskin overcoat, by rich and 
poor alike. The peasants wear this fur dress the whole year 
round, rarely taking it off unless when at work or asleep. 
Being so seldom changed, the peasants' clothes are not a 
model of cleanliness, but both men and women, as a rule, 
keep their bodies very clean. Every family not totally des- 
titute has its hot steam-bath, where all wash, on the eve 
of every holiday, with great punctiliousness. The poorer 
amono: them who have no bath of their own use the fam- 
ily oven for this purpose just after the removal of the 
coal. This is a real martyrdom, as the first sensation of a 
man unaccustomed to such exploits is that of being roasted 
alive. 

As to the food, which forms the chief item of expendi- 
ture to people living in a simple way, and which presents 
the greatest scale of variation among peasant families, the 
allowance which has to be made for wealth is exceedingly 
modest. Those peasant families which can be classed as 
rich or well to do use whole-meal bread and gruel all the 
year round, and eat it with satisfaction. But as long as they 
keep to the " peasant's state " — in other terms, as long as 
they are living from the land and tilling it with their own 
liands — the Russians do not depart from the chiefly vege- 
tarian and extremely simple system of diet common to the 
average peasant. They eat meat on Sundays, and occasion- 
ally on a week-day, but never every day. It is a general 
maxim among all peasant households not to spend any- 
thing on themselves, if they can help it, that is not " home- 
made," home-grown, or reared on their own premises. As 
no family living by husbandry alone can rear on its own 



HAED TIMES. 145 

premises a sufficient number of cattle to supply it with 
meat every day, it, as a matter of course, adopts the above- 
mentioned custom. 

This does not spring from stinginess. The same families^ 
vfhen moving to a town and engaged in business, spend 
just as much, and live in just the same style, as the well-to- 
do merchants and towns-people. But so long as their ties 
to the land remain unbroken, the land is their first care. 
Very close-fisted in his household expenditure, the rich 
peasant will yet spend generously for the extension of his 
agriculture, the improvement of his working implements, 
or the auocmentation of the number of his cattle. He ex- 
pects a good return for his outlay, as the contrary would be 
proof of a blunder on his part. But money is not the only 
thing he has in view ; he is heart-sick at the sight of bad 
crops, without in the least thinking of the possible pecun- 
iary losses. If quite well off, he will none the less over- 
work himself at the hay harvest, just as much as will the 
poorest man in the village. 

There is, indeed, a good deal of unselfishness in the in- 
tense love borne by the peasants to the soil, which we 
towns-people, living in almost complete estrangement from 
nature, can hardly realize, but which is deep-rooted in the 
heart of every moujik — nay, of every husbandman — with- 
out distinction of nationalitv. The same feelino* as that 
which inspires our peasant's poetry breathes in the mono- 
logue of Alexander Iden, squire of Kent, overlooking his 
garden before John Cade drops in. Michelet, in his well- 
known prose poems, " The People," has sung the ardent 
love of the French peasant for his " mistress " the land.* 



* I quote this beautiful passage as translated by John Stuart Mill 
(Pol. Be, p. 172): 

" If we would know the inmost thought, the passion, of the French 
peasant it is very easy. Let us walk out on Sunday into the coun- 

10 



146 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

Yet everything in men bears a national stamp, which re- 
flects the historical and social peculiarities of their nativo 
countries. Alexander Men, a man living amid the turmoil 
of feudal struggles, who has found on his small estate a safe 
refuge, alike from the necessity of being an oppressor and 
the wretchedness of being oppressed, experiences in the 
fact of possession a quite different enjoyment from that of 
the peasant painted by Michelet, who, an owner above all 
things else, has recently come into the possession of a free- 
hold estate into the bargain. It is yet another thing among 
our moujiks, with their perfect abhorrence of the idea of 
private property in land, and the peculiar agrarian arrange- 
ments which are the result of this objection. 

There is no strip of land in Kussia, save, perhaps, that 
whereon the peasant's house stands, which the peasant can 
call his own, in the same sense as a Continental peasant pro- 
prietor or English freeholder can claim land. To-day ho 
holds one piece of land ; by to-morrow a redistribution is 



try and follow him. ... I perceive that he is going to visit his mis- 
tress. 

*' What mistress ? — his land. 

*'I do not say he goes straight to it No; he is free to-day, and 
may either go or not. Does he not go every day in the week ? Ac- 
cordingly, he turns aside, he goes another way, he has business else- 
where. And yet — he goes. 

*' It is true, he was passing close by ; it was an opportunity. He 
looks, but apparently he will not go in ; what for ? And yet he 
enters. 

*' At least it is probable that he will not work ; he is in his Sunday 
dress: he has a clean shirt and blouse. Still there is no harm in 
plucking up this weed and throwing out that stone. There is a 
stump, too, which is in the way ; but he has not his tools with him, he 
will do it to-morrow. 

"Then he folds his arms and gazes serious and careful. He gives 
a long, very long look, and seems lost in thought. At last, if he 
thinks himself observed, if he sees a passer-by, he moves slowly away. 
Thirty paces off he stops, turns round, and casts on his land a last 
look, sombre and profound, but to those who can see it the look is full 
of passion, of heart, of devotion." 



HAKD TIMES. 147 

voted for by the mir, and he receives another piece, which 
may be larger or may be smaller than the first, according as 
to whether his family has increased or decreased in number, 
but which certainly will lie in some other part — or better 
parts — of the common field. We say parts because the 
families never receive their allotment of land in one whole 
block, but in a number of small plots and strips, scattered 
sometimes over ten, fifteen, or even more localities, and 
changed every two or three years. This plan has its incon- 
veniences ; but the peasants prefer such an arrangement. 
It affords room for perfect fairness in the distribution of 
this most precious commodity, the land, which always pre- 
sents great variety as to the quality of the soil and its posi- 
tion with respect to the roads, the village, the water, etc. 

Under such an arrangement there was no room for the 
development of the jealous and exclusive passion of owner- 
ship so characteristic of small holders, and little room in- 
deed, if any, for attachment to the communal field as a 
whole, where each peasant wanders with his own plough 
and scythe. The cohesion between the men always proves 
stronger than their attachment to the soil. 

Thus our peasants have no difficulty whatever in migrat- 
ing to new places, provided they may start there on the 
same work and in the same mode of life which has proved 
itself congenial to them in their old homes. It may be 
said without exaggeration that most of the peasants in the 
thickly populated central provinces of Russia are perma- 
nently on the lookout for some new settlement. As a rule, 
before moving, the peasants send forward their explorers 
the khodoks, or " pedestrians," and await their report about 
the new country. Not rarely it happens, however, that 
vague rumors about the fertility and abundance of free land 
in some far distant province set dozens of villages in mo- 
tion, which sell their goods, put what can be transported 
into cars, and start on their journey without any further 



148 TIIK KUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

inquiry, and generally end by paying dearly for their child- 
ish rashness. On the other hand, it must be mentioned that 
in no case do the peasants migrate by isolated households, 
as do the American settlers in the West. A peasant never 
detaches himself, unless compelled by main force, from his 
village and his mir. Whether well pondered or not, the 
migrations are always made, either by whole villages or by 
parts of villages, considerable enough to form a new village 
commune, a new mir at the new place. Of the many thou- 
sands of peasants who, on being compelled to abandon the 
ploughshare for a time, find regular and tolerably remunera- 
tive employment in the towns, nine out of ten return to 
"their villages" and the hardships of a peasant's life as 
soon as they have amassed a sum of money sufficient for the 
purchase of a new instalment. 

In the peasants' longing after land there is more of the 
love of a laborer for a certain kind of work which is con- 
genial to him than of concrete attachment of an owner to a 
thing possessed. A moujik will survey with great compla- 
cency the furrow his plough and his faithful friend his 
horse have traced. At the sight of a golden cornfield his 
heart will be filled with exultant joy ; he will delight, strong 
man as he is, in the powerful exertion of mowing. But to 
fallow land, the land which is no more an active participator 
in agricultural labor, he will probably be quite indifferent. 
Certain it is that he will not, like Michelet's peasant, covet 
such land with wistful, passionate eyes on his Sundays, 
when he has to abstain from working on it ; nor would he, 
in going off, turn round to throw at his mistress " a look 
full of passion." 

Moreover, if his neighbor has little land and a big fam- 
ily, he will, at the mir's bidding, give up a part of his land 
for his neighbor's sake, without in the least feeling as if a 
part of his own flesh were cut from off his body. 

It is not exactly the land, the given concrete piece of 



HARD TIMES. 149 

land, which a moujik loves; it is the mode of life which 
the possession of land allows him to live, and which blends 
into one inseparable whole both the work and the men in 
whose company he is accustomed to toil. This feelinf^, 
because it is less individualized and more complicated, is 
none the less intense ; perhaps the reverse is rather the case. 
A Russian moujik probably feels much more grieved and 
downhearted at being separated from his furrow than does 
a husbandman of any other nationality. 

Uspensky, in one of the many sketches drawn from life 
which we owe to his powerful pencil, has well caught this 
double characteristic of our peasants' longing after their 
land. In his " Ivan Afanasieff '' he shows us a peasant in 
whom, as we shall see, this feeling developed to an almost 
morbid intensity, and the tragedy of whose life consists in 
the necessity for constantly violating it. 

" Ivan Afanasieff, peasant of Slepoe Litvinovo, in the 
province of Novgorod, is a sterling example of a genuine 
husbandman, indissolubly bound to the soil both in mind 
and in heart. The land was, in his conception, his real fos- 
ter-mother and benefactress, the source of all his joys and 
sorrows, and the object of his daily prayers and thanksgiv- 
ings to God. 

** Agricultural work, with its cares, anxieties, and pleas- 
ures, was so congenial to him, and filled up his inner life 
so completely, as to exclude even the idea that husbandry 
might be exchanged for something else — for another and 
more profitable employment. Though Ivan Afanasieff is 
by no means enamoured of the land, as the reader might have 
concluded, he is yet so closely united to it, and to all the 
mutations which the land undergoes m the course of the 
year, that he and the land are almost living as parts of the 
same whole. 

" Nevertheless, Ivan Afanasieff does not feel in the least 
like a bondsman chained to the soil ; on the contrary, the 



150 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTKY. 

union between the man and tlie object of his cares has 
nothing compulsory in it. It is free and pure because spring- 
ing spontaneously from the unmixed and evident good the 
land is bestowing on the man. Quite independently of any 
selfish incentive, the man begins to feel convinced that for 
this good received he must repay the land, his benefactress, 
with care and labor. 

" With these pure, conscientious principles to form the 
base of the whole existence of a genuine, unsophisticated 
peasant family, the germ of a wonderfully high moral stand- 
ard of life might have been sown among them had they 
been allowed to thoroughly develop these fruitful ideals of 
free unconstrained union, based on the unshaken conviction 
that good must be earned by good. But alas ! though Ivan 
Afanasieff and his foster-mother the land are doing their 
respective duties with most scrupulous conscientiousness, 
times have come which seem to set no value on either the 
purity of these relations or on the fact that they form the 
backbone of the moral strength of the whole Russian peas- 
antry. 

" * Money !' roar the new times, granting neither exemp- 
tion nor respite. * But, for pity's sake, how can I leave 
the land V supplicates Ivan Afanasieff. * Suppose I go and 
seek some other employment for the sake of earning mon- 
ey, why then the land will be neglected ; and we have lived 
all our lives by the land !' 

" Ivan Afanasieff is so devoted to husbandry, is so genu- 
ine a moujik, that the highest salary he might obtain would 
not allay his craving after land, after the various sensations 
and appearances which surround the labors of the husband- 
man, and connect his soul and his mind with the sky and 
the earth, with the bright sun and the gorgeous dawns, with 
the storms and the rains, the snow-drifts, the frost, the thaw 
— with all God's creation, with all the wonders of God's 
universe. 



HARD TIMES. 151 



it ( 



Money !' roar the new times, and, willing or not, Ivan 
Afanasieff begins to struggle to scrape together some rubles." 

As Ivan Afanasieff had a horse, which, according to his 
own account, ^' though a poor, spare jade, dragged its feet 
along, nevertheless," and an uncle whom by dint of prayers 
and supplications he induced to lend him ten rubles for 
three months, he resolved to try his luck in trade. 

He did not prove a success in this, his new calling, be- 
cause he had not the hawker's stuff in him. He was unable 
to swear that his wares had cost him three times as much 
as they had done, calling God and all the ikons of the Vir- 
gin Mary to witness to his truthfulness ; nor did he know 
any of the tricks by which to preserve himself from dan- 
gerous competition. 

After a lot of trouble and much anxiety, Ivan Afanasieff 
was happy to be able to return what he had borrowed from 
his uncle. ^' From this time forth, no ! God forbid ! 
Never will I try commerce again. When I returned to my 
uncle the money he had lent, I felt relieved as from a heavy 
burden. No; let us not meddle with this commerce. It 
is no business for us peasants." 

The whole last ten years of Ivan Afanasieff's life is 
fraught with similar incidents. Being quite devoid of cun- 
ning and craft — for agricultural labor teaches no such les- 
sons — Ivan Afanasieff fails in all enterprises which have 
money-making as their aim. 

" A relative of his " — we resume the quotation — " cm- 
ployed as a nurse in St. Petersburg, procured him a situation 
as a dvomik (porter) in a house. He spent all his money on 
his railway ticket, and arrived at St. Petersburg. But he 
was as frightened as a child at the sight of the ant-hill of 
* strangers ' which he beheld around him. He was fright- 
ened, too, at his dry, uninteresting work, done for the sake 
of money. He found it hard, too, to work away from * his 
own people.' He lost his place owing to his half-hearted- 



152 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTPwY. 

ness, and had to make his way home again on foot, penniless, 
begging in Christ's name, until, half starved, he reached his 
native village, distant three hundred versts from the capital. 

" * Then I could repose at last to my heart's content,' he 
said. * Leave all these places alone! Henceforth will I 
prefer to live on dry bread so long as it is in my own home.' 

** On his return to his nest after every such absence, Ivan 
Afanasieff feels an almost childish joy, though he is always 
worse off than when he started. He is glad to have a crust 
of bread, provided it is home-made, and that he is allowed 
to live amid his own home surroundings, and with people 
whom he knows and loves. 

" * Money ! money !' roar the new times, and Ivan Afana- 
sieff, who has none, is entrapped once more in some finan- 
cial enterprise. He is engaged to dig a canal near Lake La- 
doga. They give him ten rubles in advance, and promise 
more, besides board and lodging. Ivan Afanasieff could 
not but accept ; but lo ! at the close of some six months he 
returns home again without money, without health, without 
clothes. It turned out that he and his companions had to 
sleep on the snow, that they were fed on carrion, and cheat- 
ed most shamefully as to wages ; that a multitude died from 
various diseases, and were buried in hot haste anywhere. 
After having passed through all these ordeals, and seen the 
heart-sickening suffering of others, Ivan Afanasieff is glad 
to run away, with his passport as his sole remuneration. 
And how pleased he is with his thatched roof, his big stove, 
and his diluted acidulous * home-made' kvas ! 

" However exhausted and toilworn he may be, the life 
in * his country,' and especially the return * to the peasant 
state' and to agricultural labor, speedily wipe out all traces 
of illness, of sorrow, and indignation from his face, which 
once more looks calm, noble, benevolent." * 

* Uspensky, vol. vii. 



CHAPTER II. 

No greater misfortune can befall a peasant than to be- 
come a landless batrak, compelled to hire himself out to 
landlords or to his rich fellow - peasants. The moujiks 
make, indeed, but a slight distinction between the state of 
a slave and that of a hireling. " To hire yourself out is to 
sell yourself," they say ; and they feel the same abhorrence 
for the state of a hireling as a freeman feels for the state 
of slavery. There is no name more opprobrious for a 
peasant than that of batrak. 

"Oh, they live in clover, these hen-poachers'''' (popular 
sobriquet for the policemen), said a moujik friend of Engel- 
hardt's to him, a genuine, passionate husbandman of enor- 
mous physical strength, and cleverness and ability in the 
management of his farm. 

** Why, would you take such a place yourself ?" 

" I take such a place ?" 

"Yes." 

" No, God forbid ! I would not be a batrak." 

Another day several peasants from a neighboring village 
came to his store to buy some bushels of corn. 

" Why do you not buy it from your landlord ?" he 
asked. 

" Our landlord !" they exclaimed. ** What kind of corn 
can you expect him to have when he is a batrak himself?" 

** And what contempt there was in these words !" adds 
Engelhardt. The landlord, being a poor man, served as 
steward to the estates of his rich neiochbor. 

It must be observed, however, that these same moujiks 



154 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

never neglect an opportunity of turning an bonest penny 
by tbeir labor, if it in no way implies permanent depend- 
ence. Even tbe ricb moujiks, wbo bave plenty of food and 
everytbing tbey require in tbeir bomes, after tbey bave 
barvested tbeir own crops, and during tbe winter montbs, 
wben tbere is no field - work, most willingly accept any 
work tbey can get on tbe landlord's fields or farms. Tbey 
do not in tbe least consider it to be derogatory, nor would 
tbey call tbemselves on tbat account eitber batraks or ** bire- 
lings." They bate permanent engagements only as imply- 
ing dependence on tbe pleasure of a master ; because a 
moujik, even tbougb be be poor — provided be lives by tbe 
Jabor of bis bands, on bis own bit of land, witbout apply- 
ing to anybody for assistance — is an independent, self-con- 
fident man, enjoying bis ample sbare of buman dignity and 
self-respect. 

It stands to reason tbat tbe ideas of personal dignity 
beld by our moujiks are not tbe same as tbose beld by tbe 
people of tbe civilized countries of Europe. Wben meet- 
ing a "gentleman" or an ofiicial, no matter of wbat grade, 
tbe peasant will take off bis bat and stand barebeaded 
wben spoken to. If anxious to express extreme gratitude 
to any one, be may percbance bow down to tbe ground, as 
grown-up children bowed to tbeir parents in tbe families 
of tbe middle classes up to tbe present generation. Tbe 
moujiks do not consider any of these acts to be humiliat- 
ing, bolding still in this respect to the same standards of 
ideas as bave prevailed in all countries, modern and ancient, 
wben just emerging from tbe patriarcbal state. Yet they 
possess in a higb degree one qualification whicb in all cen- 
turies and in all lands bas constituted tbe very essence of 
buman dignity — tbey are truthful. Tbere is neitber false- 
hood nor deceit in tbeir lives. In tbeir families, and in all 
tbeir mutual relations, everytbing is clear, genuine, frank ; 
this is true, even as regards egotism and brutal oppression. 



HARD TIMES. 155 

There is ranch harsliness in the every-day life of the peas- 
ant. But millions of our people have lived from genera- 
tion to generation without knowing or suffering a lie. 

" That which struck me most," says Engelhardt, " when 
I was listening to the peasants' discussions at the village 
meetings, was the freedom of speech the moujiks granted 
to themselves. We [he means the well-to-do, the upper 
classes], when discussing anything, always look suspiciously 
around, hesitating whether such or such things may safely 
be uttered or not, trembling lest we should be collared, and 
taken before some one in authority. As to the moujik, he 
fears nothing; publicly, in the street, before the whole vil- 
lage, he discusses all kinds of political and social questions 
always freely, and frankly speaking his mind about every- 
thing. A moujik, ' when not in disgrace with his landlord 
or with the Czar,' which means that he has paid all his 
taxes to both, is afraid of nobody. . . . He may stand bare- 
headed before you, but yoii feel that you have to deal with 
an independent, plain-spoken man, who is not at all inclined 
to be obsequious to you or to take his tone from you." 

Rural Russia fought bravely and pluckily for the preserva- 
tion and freedom of its husbandmen, endeared to it for so 
many reasons. 

From the first, however, it was quite evident that all the 
odds were absolutely against the peasants. With plots of 
land so small that the best-conditioned half of our rural 
population (originally "State peasants") could only win 
from them sufficient to supply one-half of their yearly in- 
come, while their poorer brethren (former serfs) could only 
gain from one-fifth to one-third of the amount absolute- 
ly needed for food and taxes; with, a burden of taxes for 
the State peasants equal in amount to 92,75 of the entire 
value of the annual produce of their allotments, and for the 
former serfs about double that proportion — 198.25 — I say, 
that with such an arrangement as this, for the peasants to 



156 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

live on the profits of their land was an arithmetical impos- 
sibility. 

The State peasants had to provide, as we have seen, for 
about 40 per cent, of their annual expenditure by some 
other means, while the former serfs had to find, some two- 
thirds, others four-fifths, of their yearly income from outside 
sources. In cases where this is found to be feasible, the 
taxes imposed on them would absorb, as we have seen in a 
former chapter, about one-half (45 per cent.) of the yearly 
gains of the people on their land and elsewhere, kindly 
leaving for their subsistence the larger half (55 per cent.). 
This is practically a permanent corvee of about three days a 
week paid in money. To call this a " tax " is a flagrant 
abuse of the term ; but our peasants would not quibble about 
that, for these moujiks are wonderfully ready tax-payers. 
They would freely give up three days of their week with- 
out a murmur, or so much as asking for an account, and 
would go merrily on their way with the remaining three, if 
only they might employ them also on the land. In other 
words, if they had their plots of land enlarged, so as to be 
able to draw from them the whole of their exceedingly 
modest revenue, they would be content. As, however, their 
bitter outcry for more land was never listened to, they have 
had to make the best shift they could. With their peculiar 
adaptability, which never despairs, and which puts a good 
face upon all diflSculties that cannot be avoided, they left 
no stone unturned in the endeavor to make both ends meet. 
They applied for whatever work they could hope to get, 
and adapted themselves to any they could find — in the fac- 
tories, at the railways, at the wharfs, in the thousands of 
petty trades which congregate in towns. 

The whole of the peasantry being in extreme need of 
extra earnings, it is a difficult matter to find employment 
for all in a non-industrial country like Russia. Every trade 
is overcrowded. 



HARD TIMES. 157 

The sums realized by "outside" (i.^., non-agricultural) 
employments are very considerable. In the provinces of 
Novgorod one-third of the peasants are permanently engaged 
in various outside industries, their wages amounting to 
about nine and a half millions of rubles a year, while from 
their land they receive only two and a half millions. Out 
of this total of twelve millions the Novgorod moujiks pay 
65 per cent, in taxes. In the province of Yaroslav, where 
about half of the whole population is engaged in outside 
employments, the non-agricultural revenue brings in eleven 
and a half millions of rubles a year ; in the districts of the 
province of Tver the peasants earn on an average about 
eight rubles a head by extra work, or about one and a half 
millions a year. 

The losses, too, are enormous, especially in the agricultur- 
al branches of the "migratory employments" — the most 
important of all. There is neither system nor order, and 
there can be none in these wholesale wanderings of people 
in search of employment. 

The peasants of the province of Viatka rush to Samara, 
while those of Samara try their luck in Viatka, and both 
Samara and Viatka send batches of their men to the Black 
Sea steppes, which return them a Roland for their Oliver. 
The travelling expenses, and the losses occasioned by the 
hundreds of thousands of failures, amount to scores of mill- 
ions of rubles every year and are a direct loss in the popu- 
lar economy, acting on the peasants as a dead weight, which 
drags them downhill. 

To atone for these constant and unavoidable losses our 
people have but one expedient — increase of work. They 
have reduced to the extreme limit the number of able- 
bodied laborers kept on the land, so as to set a greater num- 
ber free for the chances of "outside earnings." 

The petty trades carried on by artisans, who work at 
home (kustary) have flourished from of old in the vil- 



158 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

lages of Great Russia, as a supplement to agricultural 
work. 

At the present day the hard exigencies of commerce have 
gradually compelled a considerable number of these artisans 
(husbandmen) to give up husbandry altogether, and to de- 
vote themselves exclusively to their trade. But the bulk 
of them are still tillers of the soil, dedicating only the win- 
ter months to their trade. They make all kinds of goods 
which do not require expensive machinery for their manu- 
facture : earthen, steel, iron, leathern wares; woollen, cotton, 
and linen stufEs; carts and harness; hats, furniture, mats, 
carpets, lithographs and ikons, ropes, musical instruments, 
candles, soap, glass, beads, bronze, and silver finger and ear- 
rings; they bring up singing- birds, they knit laces, they 
hew grindstones. They do everything which a ready mind, 
coupled with a hungry stomach, can suggest. Invention and 
ability make good the extreme deficiency of tools as well as 
the complete absence of any assistance from scientific tech- 
nology. 

In the finest specimens of these wares the workmanship 
is brought to remarkable perfection. 

The Inquiry Commission mentions that most of the 
goods of some of the best commercial houses of Moscow, 
trading in Parisian silk hats and Viennese furniture, are 
manufactured by these kustary peasants in their villages. 
The Podolsk laces and the linen of Kostroma belong to 
the best specimens of these articles. The crushing com- 
petition of large factories working with machinery, and the 
swarms of usurious jobbers, have together, by steadily cheap- 
ening the products, driven these small artisans to lengthen 
their hours of labor to a frightful extent. 

Among weavers, lace-makers, rope-twisters, fur-dressers, 
and locksmiths it is a common thing for men to work for 
seventeen hours a day — sometimes more. 

The mat-makers — an extensive trade, by-the-way, carried 



HARD TIMES. 159 

on in four hundred villages of twenty-six provinces, and 
returning two millions of rubles yearly — have to work 
such appallingly long hours that they invented a sort of re- 
lay system which, as far as we know, is quite unique of its 
kind. They sleep three times in the twenty-four hours, at 
about equal intervals: first at dark, until 10 p.m., when they 
awaken for their night's work; then after the early break- 
fast at dawn ; and again after the dinner-hour. As they 
work, eat, and sleep in the same dusty workshop, and cer- 
tainly fall asleep as soon as they drop on the floor, they 
contrive to squeeze out of themselves nineteen hours of 
work a day, and sometimes twenty-one ! "When the work 
is very pressing," says the report of the Commission, "the 
mat-makers do not sleep more than three hours" — one hour 
at a time. 

Among all these trades, in which millions of people — 
men, women, and small children — are engaged, there are 
few in which the working time is less than sixteen hours a 
day. The result of all this fearful toil, which absorbs every 
hour unoccupied by field labor — i.e., the whole of the win- 
ter and part of the autumn — is that they barely manage to 
pay their taxes, and do not starve. This is what is meant 
by "peasants making both ends meet." 

After such horrors field labor may well assume the guise 
of recreation. Yet the peasants, when ploughing " at their 
leisure " — because this is not pressing work — rise before the 
sun, and do not go to rest until it is dark, reposing but for 
a short time during our very long northern day. As to 
the harvest-time, it is not without cause that in our peas- 
ants' idiom it is crWqA strada, or " sufferance." 

Strange! the medical inspectors say about most of our 
factories that the hygienic conditions under which the 
" hands " work are so bad, and the hours so long, that the 
only thing which prevents their being slaughtered in a mass 
is the fact that they return to their villages for the summer 



160 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

months, and are there able to recuperate their strength. 
Exactly the same conclusion was come to by the com- 
missioners concerning many of the kustary mat- makers, 
fur-dressers, and others : they are able to go on, solely be- 
cause it is only during the winter months that they work 
under such fearful pressure, and till their plots of land in 
the summer. 

At the same time all those who have written about Rus- 
sian village life — nay, all who have ever spent a few holi- 
day months in a Russian village — know that it is dif- 
ficult to conceive of more exhausting work than that 
which is performed by the peasants during the " suffer- 
ance time." 

When mowing the hay (on their own land, of course) 
the peasants do not allow themselves more than six hours' 
rest out of the twenty-four. Towards the close of the 
harvest season the peasant gets thin, and his face grows 
dark and emaciated from overwork. "They get so ex- 
hausted, that if the fine weather Lists for a long time the 
peasant will in his secret heart pray to God for rain, that 
he may have a day of rest. In fine weather the peasant, 
however weary, will never desist from his labors. He 
would feel ashamed." * 

Of course I do not say this as disproving the surgeon's 
opinion as to the strengthening effects of agricultural labor. 
Certainly it is the healthiest of all occupations, provided 
only that the laborer has food enough to make up for the 
great physical exertions this work entails. I only wish to 
show that our peasants do not spare themselves, either be- 
hind the kustar's stand and the factory loom, or on their 
land ; that their capacity for work is at least equal to their 
power of endurance; and that they really do their utmost 
in the terrible struggle for life and independence which 



* Engelhardt. 



HARD TIMES. 1^1 

tliey Lave been waging under such unfavorable conditions 
for the last twenty-six years. 

It cannot be said of them that they have won the bat- 
tle, yet neither were they defeated. Certainly they have 
saved their " honor " and something more. 

The bulk of our peasantry — that is to say, about two- 
thirds of it — have preserved the land and the position of 
independent husbandmen to which they are so passionately 
attached, and for its possession they continue to pay in 
some cases, the whole, in others twice, the value of what 
it yields in taxes, twisting themselves with miraculous 
dexterity out of the clutches of usury and from under the 
hammer of the tax-collector. But in spite of this they 
are gradually giving way, slowly, it is true, obstinately 
defending every inch of the ground; sometimes retrieving 
in a good year that which they lost in a bad one, but, on 
the whole, losing their foothold unmistakably, fatally. 

Those frightful figures, showing the increase of gener- 
al mortality, are there in all their barren eloquence to at- 
test this fact. The Government returns reo^ardintr recruits 
prove that insufficiency of food, combined with overwork, 
begins to produce its baleful ejffect on the health of the ris- 
ing generation. The peasantry, as a whole, live in greater 
want than they lived ten, nay, fifteen years ago. 

The scientific study of the daily fare of ordinary peas- 
ants — which means those who are rather badly off — would 
in all probability prove a no less puzzling problem than to 
calculate the average quantity of respirable air inhaled by 
each, and would inspire a high opinion as to the marvellous 
adjustability of the human stomach. 

When, in 1878, some people brought samples of bread 
from the province of Samara, nobody in the Geographical 
Society would believe that it was intended for the con- 
sumption of man. It looked like a brownish, sandy coal 
of inferior quality, or like dried manure, and it fell to 
11 



162 THE eussia:n peasantry. 

pieces when pressed between the fingers, so great was the 
quantity of non-nutritive ingredients mixed with the flour. 
This, of course, is exceptional ; but the average peasant 
family in our villages lead a life of privation and fasting 
which would do honor to a convent of Trappists. They 
hardly ever taste meat. Whole-meal rye-bread and whole 
buckwheat, and gruel made of grits, are dainties which they 
only taste during the few months, sometimes weeks, which 
immediately follow the harvest. 

Children from these families, when placed in situations in 
town as domestic servants in well-to-do households, at first 
literally overeat themselves on ordinary sifted rye-bread, as 
other children might do on cakes. 

In the prisons the convicts banter and tease one another. 
"You rogue, you! Look how you have fattened on the 
Crown's chistiak P^ which means whole-meal bread. Be- 
cause in the prisons rye-bread, though of inferior quality, is 
dealt out without any extraneous admixture, while the ordi- 
nary run of villagers, during eight months out of the twelve, 
eat bread mixed with husks, pounded straw, or birch bark. 

It is when reduced to such extremities as these that the 
peasant "puts himself in harness " — to use the moujiks' col- 
loquial terms — for applying to the ruinous assistance of the 
local usurer. He cannot help it if his children cry for 
bread. " They are not like cattle, the children," said one 
peasant, apologizing for his insolvency. " You cannot cut 
their throats and eat them when there is no forage for 
them. Willing or unwilling, you must feed them." And 
the peasant then steps on to the slippery declivity, at the 
foot of which yawns the abyss of misery and degradation, 
which is summed up for our rural population in the one word 
" batrak." A whole third of our peasantry have slipped 
down this descent since 1861, and are now at the bottom. 
There are twenty millions of landless rural proletarians in 
modern Russia. Among the remaining forty millions, who 



HARD TIMES. 163 

still hold their land, there are yet other millions who will 
join the ranks of the rained to-morrow if not to-day. 
Here is an extract from the reports of a Commission of 
Inquiry, giving a detailed and graphic account of the eco- 
nomical position of such peasants as are on the high road 
to become batraks, though nominally they are still land- 
holders. I translate literally, in the endeavor to preserve 
the ingenuous tone and style of the original : 

" Pankrat Horev and wife have a family of six daugh- 
ters and one son, all under age. He is the only full-grown 
workman in the house. He pays taxes for two souls — i.e., 
two shares of land. His property : one covv, one horse^ 
two sheep. Their means of subsistence: know no trade. 
Have ground their last sack of oats. 

** Ivan Jdanov. Family of five people, with one full- 
grown workman. His property : one cow, one horse, one 
sheep. Means of subsistence: no bread since the autumn. 
Begs with his children. In order to pay off the second 
instalment of his taxes has sold his hay. 

^^ Fedor Kazakovzev, Family of six people, with one 
full-grown workman. Pays for one and a half souls (share 
of. land). His property: one cow; no horse. Means for 
subsistence : no trade ; goes begging. To pay the taxes has 
sold his stable. 

" Eraelian Jdanov, A family of ten people, of which 
only one is a full-grown workman. Pays for one and a 
half souls. His property : no cow, no horse ; the house in 
ruins — uninhabitable. Means of subsistence : beofofins:. To 
pay the taxes has sold his last horse. 

^^ Efrem Tarasov, A family of six people, with one 
full-grown workman. Pays for two souls. His property : 
one horse, old and lean, one sheep. Means of subsistence : 
no bread ; are begging. 

" Evsignei Usskov has a family of six. Pays for two 
souls. His property : one horse, one calf. Means of sub- 
sistence : arc eating their last oat-bread. To pay the taxes 
has sold his pig. 

** Prod Jdanov, A family of seven people, with only 



164 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

one full-grown \Yorkman. Pays for three souls. His prop- 
erty: one horse. Means of subsistence: to pay the taxes 
has sold his horse ; to buy bread, his cow. This they have 
already eaten, and now are begging. 

^^ Andreian Zaushnitzin, A family of seven people, with 
one full-grown workman. Pays for two souls. His prop- 
erty : no horse, no cow, two sheep. Means of subsistence: 
to pay the taxes has sold his horse and his cow. No bread. 
Are begging." . . . "* 

For peasants in such an evil plight, whose name is legion, 
to be converted into downright batraks would be to a cer- 
tain extent a deliverance. They would no longer be wor- 
ried about the taxes, and their position would be clear once 
and forever. That which makes them cleave so tenaciously 
to the land is the hope, but rarely realized, that ** perhaps " 
by some lucky chance they may be able to struggle through 
their present straits, rear their children, and then, when the 
household numbers several workmen, all will be well again, 
and they become " real moujiks " once more. 

Hundreds of thousands of peasants, when once compelled 
to resign the land, leave the country altogether, swelling the 
masses of our town proletarians, paupers, and tramps. The 
bulk of the landless peasants do not, however, leave their 
native villages. They seek employment as batraks in the 
village or neighborhood, and wander as day laborers from 
one master to another. Their families live in the village, 
in the izba (cottage) they have retained, and to which the 
father returns when out of employment. 

If the commune is not very hard up, no taxes or duties 
are imposed on these hohyls and hohylkas, as the male and 
female landless householders are called. In such communes 
as are in distressed circumstances, and which cannot afford 

* *' Recordg of the Zerastvo of Orloif District, in the Province of 
Viatka,"m5,p. 254. 



HARD TIMES. 165 

to exempt any, tliey have to bear their share of the common 
burdens, such as the digging of wells, the construction of 
bridges, or, if they keep any cattle themselves, the hiring 
of the communal shepherd. 

But whether they pay anything or not, whether they 
work or beg, the bobyls and bobylkas retain their full voice 
in public affairs, and their place at the communal meetings 
of the mir. There is not a single case on record of any 
attempt on the part of a mir to curtail these rights, which, 
in their opinion, are due to manhood and not to property. 
It is not, however, to this class, which is so absolutely de- 
pendent on the koulaks, and so easily cowed by them, that 
the mir can look for an active support in its struggle for 
freedom against its chief enemies and oppressors. 

There are few rural districts which enjoy real and genu- 
ine self-government. In most of them the Government 
appointments are monopolized by koulaks and mir-eaters 
pure and simple. An honest peasant, a mir's man, anxious 
to protect the mir's interests against the village koulaks, as 
well as the police superintendents, stands but a poor chance 
against one of the koulaks, supported, as they are, by the 
police and local administration. To obtain the post of 
star^shina for their own man, or to overthrow some notori- 
ous swindler hated by all, who may chance to fill it for the 
time being, the peasants have to resort to no end of can- 
vassing, agitation, and diplomacy in order to detach from 
the koulak who opposes them some influential supporter 
of his own set, to inspire the timid with courage, and per- 
suade them to firmly resist the threats of the stanovoi, the 
ispravnik, and the " member." 

More often than not these efforts are not crowned with 
success, and hence the fact that there are few districts in 
which there is no underhand contest a'oin^: on between the 
commonalty and the board of officials. But in a prosper- 
ous and truly agricultural commune — which is tantamount 



166 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

to saying, in a strongly united commune — the koulak, even 
when accepted as the head of the administration, will think 
twice before committing a gross injury to a member of the 
mir, or before plunging his grasping hand too deeply into 
the communal cash-box. For a flourishing agricultural 
commune not in "arrear" with its taxes even the police 
have no overpowering terrors, and the mir grows very ob- 
stinate when provoked beyond a certain limit. 

We gaze on another picture when we look at poor, half- 
ruined villages swamped by " arrears," overcrowded by bo- 
byls indebted almost to a man to the koulak, and depend- 
ent on his kindness and mercy. Here the koulak reigns 
supreme. Whether in office or not, he is absolute master of 
the position, because he is able to sway the mir's vote at 
his pleasure. Both elders and judges, who among other 
powers have the right to inflict corporal punishment on 
the peasants of their district, are the tools, friends, depend- 
ents, obedient to his biddings. In such communities the 
koulaks verily are absolute masters. The very vastness 
of the powers wielded by the mir makes it extremely dan- 
gerous to resist the koulak — should there be no rivalry 
among the set, almost impossible. 

Thus are the koulaks not merely instrumental in the ma- 
terial ruin of our peasantry ; they are the chief agents in 
the demoralization and perversion of our people's public 
spirit, and of those democratic communal institutions which 
first fostered it. At the same time the koulaks serve as a 
channel by which the demoralizing influences which come 
from the police and the administrations are infiltrated into 
the hearts of the villages. 



CHAPTER III. 

Between these two classes — the rural proletarians on the 
one hand and the rural plutocracy on the other — stands a 
third, that of the " gray " moujik. In their ranks we place 
all peasants who, without being necessarily free from debt 
to the koulak or to the State, have, nevertheless, preserved 
their land, their agricultural implements, and their cattle in 
good working condition, so as to have a reasonable hope of 
retrieving their position within an appreciable time. Ex- 
cluding all such merely nominal landholders, who have no 
cattle wherewith to till their land, we shall still find this to 
be a sufficiently numerous class. At the present time it 
counts among its numbers certainly more than one-half of 
our rural population, though it is constantly on the de- 
crease. The upper stratum melts into the rural plutocracy, 
the lower swells the ranks of rural proletariats. 

This is the class which forms the backbone of Russian 
strength ; it intervenes between the State and bankruptcy ; 
it upholds the great popular principles of social and eco- 
nomical life, and struggles undaunted against the police and 
the tax-gatherer; it withstands the heavy pressure of the 
rural plutocracy ; it resists the downward influence of the 
proletariats. 

It must be in fairness admitted that in defending their 
political and social principles our peasants, the "gray" mou- 
jiks at their head, have shown the same tenacity and ob- 
stinacy as they showed in the protection of their favorite 
economical status. Indeed, they have succeeded in preserv- 
ing in absolute integrity the fundamental axiom that there 



168 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTKY. 

shall be no such thing as personal proprietorship in land or 
in any other source of Avealth which is provided by nature. 
Notwithstanding the many influences working in an oppo- 
site direction, they still hold, with a few unimportant ex- 
ceptions, to the principle that a man has a right of owner- 
ship in a thing only in so nmcli and in so far as it embodies 
his labor. In politics they stick to the idea of the supreme 
authority of the mir, and of the perfect equality of its mem- 
bers, considering the many violations of these principles as 
abuses; and against them the popular conscience never 
ceases to protest. 

There is certainly a far greater uniformity in the popu- 
lar mind as to these two fundamental points than might 
have been anticipated from the diversity in the social con- 
dition of the people. 

The very koulaks and mir-eaters who misapply them to 
their own ends will generally recognize them in the ab- 
stract. That which in our social organization had become 
damaged, vitiated, corrupted, is the interior relations be- 
tween the members of the commune, affecting the opinions 
held as to a man's moral conduct and his obligations tow- 
ards his fellow-men. This ideal of " unity," then, which we 
have endeavored to set forth in one of our former chapters, 
was the natural outcome of the material and social equi- 
librium existing at one time in Russia, but which is now 
gradually disappearing from our village communities. 

The village in its natural state — as it was in by-gone days, 
and could yet be under a more rational agrarian arrange- 
ment — may be best described as an association of laborers, 
among whom there are no conflicting interests to check or 
mar that sentiment of mutual good-will which is inherent 
in all men as social beings. Friendliness among these peas- 
ants was assured by their not being in any sense competi- 
tors : that which in other branches of industry can be at- 
tained only by means of a complicated social arrangement 



HARD TIMES. 169 

is obtained in agriculture by itself — I mean independence 
of the market. Each lives by the fruit of his labor, not 
from the profits he might or might not get by selling to 
somebody else. Two husbandmen tilling their fields side 
by side are not rivals, unless in the noble and artistic emu- 
lation that may be felt by two laborers delighting in their 
work. The failure of the one can in no way be considered 
by the other as a windfall for himself. Nor could one feel 
grieved, or in the least alarmed, if the other, being stronger 
or abler or simply luckier, earned more. 

Differences in wealth always existed among our peasants. 
In each village there have always been rich families, poor 
families, and those of moderate means; a difference regu- 
lated by their respective ability and industry, and particu- 
larly by the number and age of the members which formed 
each household. Large families, composed of five, six, and 
even more full-grown workers, and "rich families" are sy- 
nonymous terms even now. But, as for every pair of will- 
ing hands there was land waiting to be tilled, a diligent 
peasant could well afford to be indifferent to the question 
as to how many silver coins his neighbor had hidden away 
in his strong-box. He was in no need of it ; and in the 
next generation the chances of birth and death might make 
his family a large one, and make him in his turn a "rich" 
man. Labor was the certain source of prosperity and in- 
dependence. It was also an all-sufficient ground for self- 
respect and for considerate treatment from his fellow-men. 
Labor became, to a certain extent, sanctified in the eyes of 
the people. 

" God loves labor," say our people, though nowadays 
there are few who attach more sio;nificance to these words 
than to many other virtuous precepts handed down by pop- 
ular tradition. Men belonging to the type of unselfish 
workers are rare in our time. Lukian, for example — " the 
batrak of Ivan Ermolaeff, with whom even his exacting 



170 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

master was satisfied" — was an exceptional man. He be- 
lieved labor to be meritorious before the face of God. 
"God loves labor," be often said, and believed it firmly. 
With a view to future beatitude he moved logs and carried 
beams, rolled stones, and overtaxed his strength over the 
most back-breaking efforts, not only without a grumble or 
any feelings of spite, but with an unshaken belief that all 
this was agreeable to God. "He likes it," said Lukian, 
while, red as a turkey-cock and dripping with perspiration, 
he was pulling up an enormous stake sticking in the bed of 
the river, under the direction of Ivan Ermolaeff. He was 
all wet, he was sighing and groaning from the strain, but 
God saw these efforts and approved of Lukian. The stake 
creaked and splashed as it was pulled out of the deep mire 
of the river's channel, and Lukian then knew for certain 
that " God had seen his efforts and had added a new mark 
to the many he had already gained by his labors." 

In losing the power to secure the satisfaction of the peo- 
ple's needs, labor lost much of its dignity, scope, and at- 
tractiveness. The only thing which is appreciated now, 
and which alone can secure to the peasant peace, safety, and 
respect, is money. But from daily observation and experi- 
ence he soon learns that money cannot be viewed in the 
same light as the product of the land. The people who 
succeed in making the most money are not always those 
whor^ork the hardest, but in many cases those who do 
not work at all, and are only the more respected for being 
idle, both in the wide world outside, of which the moujik 
catches occasional glimpses, and in the village where he 
lives. The koulak, whose motto is " Only fools work," is 
certainly the man whose position is the most enviable. 
Nobody would dare to lay a finger on him. To bim not 
only the small fry — starshina, pissars, uriadniks — but the 
stanovoi himself are kind and considerate. The "gray" 
moujik cannot help feeling tired and disgusted with his 



HARD TIMES. l7l 

eternal drudgery over his ** cat's plot," which brings him in 
such a pittance. He also longs to be safe, and not to live 
in momentary dread of a flogging ; he, too, wishes to be 
respected, and would not in the least object to being court- 
ed. The greed for money now permeates the whole rural 
population ; they all join in the mad chase after rubles — a 
chase which, moreover, diminishes their attachment both to 
the land and to the village. 

On the land a household works together; the product is 
the result of common labor, and is considered as common 
property. The mir as a whole plays an all-important part 
in the cycle of agricultural life, as guardian of the land, 
meadows, and forests, controlling their fair distribution 
among the people, and directing the common work. When 
making money in towns, everybody depends on his own 
personal ability and industry. The village does not in any 
way assist or protect him, and the household very rarely 
does. His duties towards the mir become a burden to him, 
and he is much tempted to resent the constant drain on his 
resources made by his own relatives. 

This is one of the chief causes of the breaking up of the 
large patriarchal families which flourished among the Rus- 
sian peasants in olden times. " The Gorshkovs," says Us- 
pensky, " were one of the richest and largest families in 
Slepoe Litvinovo ; in proof of which I may state that up 
to the present moment they have always lived imC ? the 
same roof. I called on them pretty often, and whatever the 
hour of my visit — early morning or mid-day or evening — 
I invariably found all the members of the family not en- 
gaged upon some work — men, women, and children — seated 
round a big samovar sipping their weak tea. They always 
asked me to partake of their refreshment, and they were 
exceedingly polite and obliging, but nevertheless I did not 
feel at my ease among them. In the mutual relations of 
the members of the family there was a certain constraint 



172 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

and insincerity. It seemed not only as if I were a stranger 
among them, but that they were all strangers to one another. 
When I became better acquainted with this family, and with 
the general conditions of peasant life, I was convinced that 
my presentiments had not deceived me. There was deep- 
seated internal discord in the family, which was only held 
together partly by the sldll of the clever and robust old 
grandmother, whom all were accustomed to obey, and espe- 
cially by the unwillingness of each one ' to be the first to 
begin the row.' It seemed as though each one expected 
that one of the others should be the first to * rebel.' 

" This discord was of ancient date. It had been worm- 
ing itself gradually into the heart of the family almost ever 
since the time when the necessity for earning something 
extra first became manifest. One of the brothers went to 
St. Petersburg during the winter months as a cabman, while 
another engaged himself as a forester ; but the inequality 
of their earnings had disturbed the economical harmony 
of the household. In five months the cabman sent one 
hundred rubles home to the family, while the forester had 
only earned twenty -five rubles. Now, the question was, 
Why should he (the forester) consume with such avidity 
the tea and sugar dearly purchased with the cabman's mon- 
ey ? And in general : Why should this tea be absorbed 
with such greediness by all the numerous members of the 
household — by the elder brother, for instance, who alone 
drank something like eighty cups a day (the whole family 
consumed about nine hundred cups per diem), while he did 
not move a finger towards earning all this tea and sugar? 
While the cabman was freezing in the cold night air, or 
busying himself with some drunken passenger, or was being 
abused and beaten by a policeman on duty near some thea- 
tre, this elder brother was comfortably stretched upon his 
belly on the warm family oven, pouring out some nonsense 
about twenty -seven bears whom he had seen rambling 



HAED TIMES. 173 

through the country, with their wlielps, in search of new 
land for settlement. True, his (the cabman's) children were 
fed in the family while he was in town; in the summer 
he was, however, at home, and worked upon their common 
land with the rest. His children had a right to their 
bread. The only thing which made him tolerate his de- 
pendency was that the horse and the carriage, which he 
drove when in town, had been purchased out of the com- 
mon funds. But his endurance did not promise to hold 
out much longer. 

" For two years he had kept silence ; but his people were 
well aware that he tried to * conceal ' a part of his earnings, 
so that his contribution towards the family income should 
be pretty much the same as that furnished by the other 
brothers. When his daughter, a little girl, succeeded in 
earning fifteen rubles for the family by selling wood-berries, 
he tried to deduct that amount from his cabman's fees for 
his own private use. The grandmother would not, how- 
ever, permit this. 

"The next brother (the forester) also began to ponder 
and to calculate as to how much of his money was * en- 
grossed' by the eldest brother and his children. A dress 
for Paranka had been purchased from a peddler with his 
money. Now, Paranka was the eldest brother's daughter, 
and able to earn fifty rubles at work among the osiers, 
which she appropriated to her own private uses. The for- 
ester was very vexed and irritated about the dress bought 
of the peddler. As the grandmother took Paranka's side 
in the dispute, Alexis (the forester) took his next month's 
salary to the public-house and spent it all in drink. 

"It is impossible to describe all these domestic dissen- 
sions. The notions as to *mine' and 'j^ours,' which dis- 
turbed these people's peace of mind, were felt in every trifle 
— in every lump of sugar, cup of tea, or cotton handker- 
chief. Nicolas (the cabman) looked at Alexis, thinking, 



174 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTKY. 

* You are eating of that which is mine,' conscious, all the 
while, that at times he too had eaten of. something belong- 
ing to his younger brothers, Alexis, in his turn, could not 
feel himself quite at his ease. It was all very well for him 
to hiccough freely after drenching himself with as much 
tea as he could hold, in sign of his being well pleased and 
satisfied with himself, after having partaken of tea which 
was his own, but he was not sincere. A misgiving lurked 
in his heart that either in this tea, or in that sugar, or in 
the white bread, or — which was most certain, and by far 
the most disagreeable of all — in his own stomach, there was 
something belonging to somebody else. 

"It was exactly this *mine, thine,' peeping out from 
every mouthful and from every gulp, which drove me from 
the Gorshkovs' table, all their obliging invitations to take a 
cup of tea with them notwithstanding. They drank their 
tea solemnly and silently, looking steadily into their cups ; 
but it always seemed to me that they were all trying to 
drink the same quantity, noting, under the rose, whether 
any one had out-eaten or out-drunk the others. 

" At all events, the sidelong glances they threw upon one 
another and the children were very bad looks indeed. It 
was the same in everything. If you hired some horses of 
one of the brothers for a drive into town the others, on 
meeting you, would try to find out how much you had 
paid him. If you paid one of the brothers his fees the 
others were sure to stare at your purse and at their broth- 
er's hands. Of course such relations could not be main- 
tained for long. 

" It so happened that the first to rebel was Paranka. 
She took it into her head that she could not do without 
a regular woollen town-made dress. All the men resisted 
this whim for about eighteen months with resolute energy. 
A million of times, at least, it was proved to them by the 
grandmother and the other women, as well as by Paranka 



HARD TIMES. 175 

herself, who wept bitterly throuf^h a number of winter 
evenings, that no less than a hundred rubles of Paranka's 
money had been spent upon the family. The men resisted 
with a truly bull-like stubbornness. Finally, the grandmoth- 
er herself began to wail, and then the men gave way, and it 
was resolved that a dress should be made. 

" The eldest brother was commissioned to inquire about 
the prices and everything appertaining to the matter. He 
resolved to go to the next port, distant about fifteen miles, 
and to make his inquiries there. He took a provision of 
oats and hay. for the horses, spent two days on the trip, and 
having consulted with the smith, the farrier, and several mer- 
chants, returned home not one whit the wiser. He did not 
know how to broach the subject. In order not to allow the 
brothers to cool down, Paranka had begun to w^ail inces- 
santly from the very day the resolution as to her dress had 
been passed at the family council. By dint of these tears 
she moved the reluctant men to take active steps. The 
two next brothers put horses into the cart and also went 
to the port, for there was a saw-mill there, and, in conse- 
quence, a large number of people. They were no more 
fortunate than the elder brother, and came home with the 
conviction that the women must be sent, for Paranka gave 
them no peace with her wailings. The women went and 
returned perfectly horrified : nobody would think of mak- 
ing a dress such as Paranka wanted for less than forty rubles. 
Here all the brothers, their wives, and even Paranka herself, 
seemed to understand that the matter was at an end ; but 
God saved Paranka. A soldier who happened to be at the 
port heard about the inquiries of the Gorshkov women, and 
sent word to the headquarters of a cavalry regiment sta- 
tioned near Novgorod,- some thirty miles off. At these head- 
quarters there was a dress-maker who, profiting by a lucky 
chance (an officer was transporting a piano to St. Peters- 
burg), begged permission from the carrier to accompany 



176 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

him, and thus arrived at Paranka^s village sitting upon the 
piano. She persuaded the family that all could be well and 
cheaply arranged. 

"But when the brothers counted up everything that had 
been spent on the dress-maker during the six weeks that 
she stitched and unstitched the dress, they found that it 
represented a sum equal in value to the framework of two 
peasants' houses. 

"The dress-maker stole some pieces of stufi, and they 
had to incur extra expense in recovering them. And 
worst of all, the dress was quite unwearable. Later on, 
thanks to unremitting toil, and particularly to * conceal- 
ment' of money, Paranka succeeded in paying herself for 
a silk dress by a Novgorod dress-maker, besides a jacket 
and a paletot. All these treasures she kept hidden in the 
house of a friend. 

"The next after Paranka to squabble was Nicolas, the 
cabman. He began to urge that he had long since re- 
deemed the carriage and the horse ; but the first to break 
away from the family, and to separate in real earnest, was 
Alexis, the forester, probably because he felt more sincere- 
ly and oftener than the others did the burden of being in- 
debted to others. That part of his own earnings which he 
considered to be an extra he faithfully spent in drink, that 
it might fall to nobody's share ; he did not, like Nicolas, 
secrete it. When sober, however, he could not help feeling 
that he at times ate that which he had not earned. To 
screw his courage up to break with his family he gave him- 
self up to reckless drinking ; he squandered seventy rubles 
— that is, a whole year's salary — at the public-house, and 
drank himself mad. By this means he was able to tear 
himself from his own people. In a* sober state he would 
never have had the heart to take his children from the pa- 
ternal roof-tree, to lead away the cow and the horse, or to 
pull the slits. lie took possession of a small house built by 



HARD TIMES. 177 

the Gorshkovs some ten years previously, after a fire, and 
there he and his family lived while a new house was being 
constructed." 

The ultimate complete dissolution of the Gorshkov house- 
hold is merely a question of time. Thus far there has been 
no harm in it. The vigor of the big patriarchal families is 
sapped by the lowest instincts as well as by the loftiest as- 
pirations developed by modern times. They are incompat- 
ible with individual independence. Among the Southern 
Russians, with whom the sentiment of individuality is much 
stronger than among the Great Russians, these composite 
families are unknown. Their rapid dissolution among the 
Russians would have been an unmitigated good if it were 
not accompanied by the general relaxation of social ties be- 
tween all the members of the village community. 
12 



CHAPTER IV. 

For a community of laborers mutual assistance is only 
another name for mutual insurance. The danger of falling 
ill, or lame, of remaining without support in old age, or of 
having a " visitation " in the form of fire or murrain, is pret- 
ty well equally shared by all. In mutually assisting each 
other they are doing that which it is to their obvious inter- 
est to do — giving the same as they expect in their turn to 
receive. There is nothing particularly generous in it ; nor 
do they themselves consider it to be anything very merito- 
rious or laudable on their part. Zlatovratsky, in his " Dcr- 
evenskie Budni" (sketches of every -day village life), de- 
scribing one of the " old-fashioned " villages, observes how 
easy it is for an outsider to be led into error if he takes the 
peasants' statements in a literal sense without observing and 
investigating for himself. 

If, for instance, you were to ask the peasants whether 
they assist the poor, they would certainly answer " Oh dear 
me, no ! We are too hard-up ourselves. We throw a Jcepek, 
or a piece of bread, to the poor who knock at our window, 
that is all." But, if you take the trouble to observe more 
closely, you are surprised to discover the existence of a vast 
system of co-operative assistance given to the aged, the or- 
phaned, and the sick, both in field-work and in household 
labor; only the peasants do not look upon this as charity. 
It is a simple fulfilment of the obligations of their " daily 
life." The old man, whose corn the whole mir turns out to 
carry on a Sunday afternoon, receives only what is his due 
as a mir's laborer and tax-payer of several score of years' 



HAED TIMES. 179 

standing. The orphan receives but a benefit on account of 
labors to come. 

The present increase in the number of purely industrial 
occupations, which now largely predominate over the agri- 
cultural, has made the necessity for this reciprocity less self- 
evident, and general impoverishment has made its practice 
hardly possible, even with the best - intentioned. People 
who live from hand to mouth, and who are compelled to 
put into requisition every working hour of the day on their 
own account in order to avert or to postpone their own 
ruin, cannot afford to be solicitous over any needs but 
their own. Such considerate mutual assistance, the hu- 
manity of which is enhanced by the delicacy with which it 
is offered, is becoming rarer and rarer. Charity — for our 
people are still very charitable — is the meagre wraith of 
the once high conception of co-operative assistance ten- 
dered as a duty on the one hand, and accepted as a right 
on the other. 

Engelhardt gives an exceedingly interesting account of 
the practice of almsgiving among the peasants of North- 
western Russia (white Russian), which under other guises 
exists in nearly every district of the Empire : 

*' There is no regular distribution by weight of baked 
bread to beggars, as is or rather was the custom in times 
of yore in the manor-houses. In my house the cook simply 
gives those who ask the * morsels,' or small pieces of rye- 
bread, as do all peasants. As long as a moujik has one 
loaf of bread left in his house his wife will give * morsels.' 
I gave no orders as to the * morsels,' and knew nothing 
about the custom. The cook decided on her own responsi- 
bility that * we ' must give * morsels,' and she accordingly 
does it." 

In our province, even after a good season, few peasants 
are able to make their own bread last until harvest-time 
comes round again. Almost every family has to buy bread 



180 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTKY. 

to some extent; and when there is no money for it, the 
head of the household sends the children, the old men, and 
women for " morsels." One year, for instance, the crops 
were very bad : there was neither bread for the people nor, 
worse still, forage for the cattle. A man may find food for 
himself among the people by means of these " morsels ;" 
but how is be to feed a horse ? It cannot be sent from 
door to door in search of *' morsels." The outlook is bad, 
so bad that it cannot well be worse. Most of the children 
were sent for " morsels " before SS. Cossma and Damian 
(1st of November: the peasants count the time by the 
saints-days). The cold "St. George" (26th of November) 
in this year proved a hungry one too. There are two " St. 
George's" days in the year: the cold — 26th of November 
— and the hungry — 23d of April, which, falling as it does 
in the spring, is at a very hungry time of the year. The 
peasants began to buy bread long before " St. Nicolas," 
which shows that they had not a grain of home-grown corn 
in the house; for the peasant will never buy any bread 
until the last pound of flour is kneaded. By the end of 
December about thirty couples came every day and begged 
for " morsels." Among them were children and old peo- 
ple, also strong lads and maidens. Hunger is a hard mas- 
ter; a fasting man will sell the very saints, say the moujiks. 
A young man or girl feels reluctant and ashamed to beg, 
but there is no help for it. There is nothing, literally noth- 
ing, to eat at home. To-day they have eaten the last loaf 
of bread, from which they yesterday cut " morsels " for those 
who knocked at their door. No bread, no work. Every- 
body would be happy to work for bare food ; but work — 
why, there is none. A man who seeks for " morsels" and 
a regular "beggar" belong to two entirely different types 
of people. A beggar is a professional man ; begging is his 
trade. A beggar has no land, no house, no permanent abid- 
ing place, for he is constantly wandering from one place to 



HARD TIMES. 181 

another, collecting bread, eggs, and money : he straightway 
converts everything he receives in kind — corn, eggs, flour, 
etc. — into ready money. He is generally a cripple, a sickly 
man incapable of work, a feeble old man, or a fool : he is 
clad in rags, and begs in a loud voice, sometimes in an im- 
portunate way, and is not ashamed of his calling. A beg- 
gar is God's man. He rarely wanders among the moujiks, 
and prefers to haunt towns, fairs, and busy places, where 
gentlemen and merchants congregate. Professional beggars 
are rare in the villages ; there they would have little to 
expect. 

A man, however, who asks for '^ morsels " is of quite an- 
other class. He is a peasant from the neighborhood. He 
is clothed like all his brother peasants, sometimes in a new 
armiak ; a linen sack slung over his shoulder is his only dis- 
tinguishing mark. If he belongs to the immediate neigh- 
borhood even the sack will be missing, for he is ashamed 
to wear it. He enters the house as if by accident, and on 
no particular business beyond warming himself a little, and 
the mistress of the house, so as not to offend his modesty, 
will give him the " morsel " incidentally, and " unawares." 
If the man comes at dinner-time he is invited to table. 
The moujik is very delicate in the management of such 
matters, because he knows that some day he, too, may per- 
haps have to seek " morsels " on his own account. 

** No man can forswear either the prison or the sack," say 
the peasants. The man who calls for a ** morsel " is ashamed 
to beg. On entering the izba he makes the sign of the 
cross and stops on the threshold in silence or mutters, in 
a low voice, ** Give in Christ's name." Nobody pays any 
attention to him ; all go on with their business, and chat 
or laugh as if nobody were there. Only the mistress ap- 
proaches the table, picks up a piece of bread from three to 
four square inches in size, and gives it to her visitor. He 
makes the sign of the cross and goes. All the pieces given 



182 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

are of the same size. If any of the slices given are three 
square inches in size, all are three square inches. If two 
people come together (they generally work in couples) the 
mistress puts the question, " Are you collecting together?" 
If the answer is " Yes," she gives them a piece of six square 
inches ; if separately, she cuts the piece in two. 

The man who tramps the neighborhood thus owns a 
house, and enjoys his allotted share of land ; he is the own- 
er of horses, cows, sheep, clothes, only /or the moment he has 
no bread. When in ten months* time he carries his crops 
he will not merely cease begging, but will himself be the 
giver of bread to others; if by means of the aid now af- 
forded him he weathers the storm and succeeds in finding 
work he will with the money he earns at once buy bread, 
and himself help those who have none. This system of 
asking for help "in kind" serves as a makeshift to avoid 
the irretrievable ruin which would follow the selling off of 
his cattle and other property. It is a painful expedient 
to which the peasants only resort when all others have 
failed. 

" In the autumn " — we resume the quotation — " when the 
crops are just gathered, practically all these peasants eat 
whole-meal rye-bread until their hunger is satisfied. Just 
a few exceptionally prudent families do add husks to their 
flour even at this season of the year, but such foresight is 
rare. Then, after a time the head of the family notices 
that bread is running short, the family has to begin to eat 
less — perhaps twice a day instead of three times, then only 
once ; the next step is to add husks to the flour. If there 
is any money left after the taxes are paid bread is bought, 
but if there is no money in the house, the head of the 
household tries to borrow, and pays an enormous interest 
on any accommodation he gets. Then, when all other 
means are exhausted, and the last bread has been eaten, the 
children and the old people swing the sacks over their 



HARD TIMES, 183 

shoulders and tramp to the neighboring villages asking 
help. While the children generally return to sleep at 
home, their elders go to more remote parts of the country 
and return home only after they have collected a consider- 
able number of * morsels.' On these the family dines, and if 
there are any left they are first dried in the oven, and then 
stored away for future use. In the mean time the father 
is struggling to find work, or to borrow bread, and the mis- 
tress is looking after the cattle, and cannot leave the house. 
The grown-up young people are eager for any employment 
that will bring in food. 

" The father has perhaps succeeded in procuring a few 
bushels of corn, and in that case the children no longer go 
to the mir and beg from door to door, and the mistress 
once more distributes * morsels ' to those who knock at 
theirs. If, on the other hand, the father has failed to pro- 
cure corn, the children are followed in their piteous quest 
by the grown-up members of the family, and finally by 
the father himself, who does not go on foot, but with his 
cart and horse, his wife remaining alone in the house to 
look after the cattle. The advantage of driving is that the 
needy men can thus penetrate much farther into the coun- 
try, often even beyond the borders of their province. 

" This winter it has been common enough to meet a cart 
full of sacks with 'morsels' on the road, and on the cart 
a moujik, a girl, and a boy. Such peasants do not return 
home before they have collected a considerable supply of 
bread, which they dry in the oven when stopping to sleep 
in some village. The family feed on these biscuits, while 
the father works about the house or seeks for employment 
somewhere else. When the stock of * morsels' begins to 
be exhausted the horse is once more put to the cart, and 
they go again on their weary round. Many families pro- 
vide themselves with food in this way all the winter, and 
even during a part of the spring; and sometimes when 



184 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

there is a good supply of these * morsels 'in the house 
they are distributed to those who come to beg. 

" All this clearly proves that these men are not professional 
beggars. To them people do not say, when unwilling to 
give anything themselves, ' God will give you in our stead,' as 
they do to a regular beggar ; but, * We have nothing to give ; 
we are going to solicit " morsels " for ourselves.' Another 
distinction to be drawn between the two classes of beggars 
is, that whereas, as has before been stated, the peasant gives 
to those in need as soon as he is able, the professional beg- 
gar never gives anything to any one. 

" Not to give a ' morsel ' when there is bread in the house 
is a sin. That is why my cook gave them without first 
asking for my permission. Had I forbidden her to do so 
she would most likely have rebuked me, and in all proba- 
bility have flatly declined to remain in my service." 

In addition to this remarkable development of public spir- 
ited self-sacrifice among our peasants, instances occur of yet 
higher manifestations of the feeling of human brotherhood. 

Potanin, in writing of a commune in the Nicolsk district, 
province of Vologda, which depended for its support on the 
work supplied by a salt - house in the neighborhood, men- 
tions how in 1878 the firm began to lose ground, and was 
compelled to reduce the number of the men employed by 
one-half. The community, brought face to face with the 
necessity of seeing one-half of its members condemned to 
starvation, passed the resolution that each peasant should 
work only three days in the week instead of six, a& hereto- 
fore. It was an heroic impulse which decided these men 
to suffer gradually, but together, rather than to snatch the 
bread from one another's mouths. 

As a rule, in all similar cases it has been found that the 
strongest will outbid the feeblest, and the whole community 
will look with perfect composure on the ruin of its weaker 
members. 



HARD TIMES. 185 

This power of self-restraint on behalf of the community 
has now given place to that cold-blooded indiflEerence to 
others' woes, to that animal egotism, indicative of a uni- 
versal breaking up, which has struck with awe many of the 
observers of modern village life. 

There is no secret between fellow - villagers concerning 
their material prosperity. Every peasant knows the exact 
number of acres tilled by each one of his companions, the 
number of sacks of grain he has sold, and the number he 
has kept, and could give an inventory of each household in 
turn, by heart. If some ill-luck befall a family, the village 
knows exactly what will be the outcome of it. The ruin is 
foreseen, predicted, expected, with fatal certainty, and takes 
nobody by surprise. 

Here is an excellent peasant family — a husband, wife, 
two boys, and a girl. It is hard work for the father to 
feed them all, but he has good helpmates — an industrious, 
clever wife, and a daughter who has entered upon her six- 
teenth year. They make both ends meet. The father 
wishes to find a son-in-law who would consent to live with 
them, and is looking out for a suitable match for the girl ; 
then the household would be complete. But it chances 
that the father hurts his leg, and has to keep his bed. 
This misfortune occurs at the season when work is most 
pressing, in the spring. The neighbors who have no such 
affliction to bear, on seeing the piece of ill-luck which has 
befallen the family, cry, *' Oh, what a pity ! what a pity ! 
Nothing could be worse than to be laid by at the season 
when work is heaviest. They will now have to sell their 
two calves to enable them to hire a laborer, and they will 
be unable to marry their Mariushka." 

All this proves true to a fraction. The two calves des- 
tined to defray the expenses of the wedding are sold, and 
Mariushka's marriage is postponed. The batrak has done 
his trashy work, and has gone ; but the master still remains 



186 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

lying in his bed. An old woman treats him with various 
home-made medicaments, but the leg grows worse and 
worse. 

In the mean time the mowing season has commenced. 
Now there is nothing left to sell to pay for the hiring of a 
batrak. The father makes an effort, rises from his sick-bed, 
sets his scythe, and goes to the field. He mows the hay, 
but irritates his wounded leg so badly that he falls quite 
ill, and at about the middle of the harvest-time breathes his 
last. 

" Now," say the neighbors, " Mariushka must go to town 
as a servant, to earn money for her mother. There is no 
use in her remaining at home ; nobody will marry her now, 
poor soul !" 

And once more everything happens exactly as had been 
predicted. Nobody will marry Mariushka, for she cannot 
leave her family, and no young man will venture to enter 
into the household as one of its members with so many 
mouths to feed — two brothers under age, the mother, and 
his own children into the bargain. So the family remains 
without a man. But the taxes must be paid for the land, 
so they resolve to engage a permanent batrak. Mariushka 
goes to town to service, to make up enough money for his 
wages ; but she has everything to learn before she can be 
engaged as a trained servant. Many months pass before 
she is able to buy herself fitting dresses to wear when she 
shall have found employment in a "respectable" house. 
To these difficulties must be added the numberless uncer- 
tainties and temptations besetting a young girl in a town. 
She may be seduced, and return with a baby to the village, 
and a life of eternal shame. A mere accident — the gentle- 
man in whose family she was engaged as servant has lost 
his employment, and for three months is unable to pay her 
her wages, so that Mariushka cannot send a penny home 
to her mother just at the time when money is the most 



HARD TIMES. 187 

urgently needed. Arrears in the taxes acctimulate upon the 
arrears of the wages due to the batrak. 

The land is taken from the mother, and her cow is sold 
to pay the batrak. What could the poor woman do in this 
extremity ? She has two boys to bring up — one of ten, the 
other of eleven years of age. They are not workers as yet, but 
they need to be fed, and the mother has nothing to give them. 
Her only expedient is to send them also to town to Mariush- 
ka, who is glad to find them employment with a publican. 

The mother remains alone. She is sick at heart, weary 
of this life of suffering and wretchedness. She sells the 
house and goes away, a sack on her shoulders, to the shrine 
of some saint, there to pray for the soul of her deceased 
husband, and for the two boys who are pining away in the 
tavern, and for Mariushka, too, of whom nothing whatever 
has been heard. " Oh, poor creature !" say the neighbors, 
pityingly, as they see the owner of the ruined nest off ; and 
a week later they welcome the new proprietors of the house. 
The recent drama is forgotten. 

Or another case — two brothers. The elder, Nicolas, is 
a hard-working, indefatigable moujik, but he can hardly 
keep body and soul together, and is gnawing his heart out 
in vain efforts to improve his condition. Opposite him 
lives his brother Aleshka, a bumpkin, who never yet suc- 
ceeded in anything. This Aleshka was employed as a 
forest surveyor, at seven rubles per month. Nicolas has 
ousted him. Aleshka occasionally takes a drop too much, 
while Nicolas is a total abstainer. " It is just the same to 
Aleshka whether he earns money or not," he said. 

Ousted from this employment, Aleshka tries the wood 
trade, and delivers firewood at certain places. Nicolas 
" finds out " the wood-yard, offers his services at a lower 
price, and ousts his brother again. " What right has he to 
grumble?" he asked; "I do not hinder him from offering 
his services at a yet cheaper rate." 



188 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

And what of tlieir fellow-villagers, the mir? What are 
they doing ? They look on with perfect equanimity, merely 
stating the facts : " John must go begging " — " Peter will 
flourish" — "Andrew will have to starve," and so on. 

When Nicolas turned his brother out of his situation in 
the forest, "Seven rubles a month will be a godsend to 
Nicolas !" remarked the neighbors. " Now he will thrive 
apace." When Aleshka was ousted by his brother from 
the wood trade, and shortly afterwards lost to him a small 
meadow, rented from a landlord, the neighbors said, " Now 
Aleshka is lost; he must come to downright ruin." And 
Aleshka could not help ratifying their prognostication. 
He has a lot of children, one under another, and a sickly 
wife unfortunately endowed with great fecundity. Aleshka, 
on seeing ruin and desolation creeping over him, gave him- 
self up to drinking, and began to beat his wife furiously, 
in the hope that it might subdue her untoward fecundity, 
and bring: it to a level with his miserable means. In this 
he did not succeed, and then threw the heft after the 
hatchet by drinking more than ever. On seeing him 
stretched in the mud in the gutter, face downward, motion- 
less as a log, people predicted, " He will be found thus some 
day, dead." Aleshka, however, escaped death, and a new 
and terrible misfortune overtook him. 

One day the news spread through the village that Alesh- 
ka's three daughters, left by the mother to the care of their 
elder brother, a boy of nine (the father was absent also, 
stealing wood from the landlord's forest), had, in playing, 
upset a boiling samovar, and had scalded themselves from 
head to foot. " In a few hours they will probably be dead," 
prophesied the village experts. As, however, in villages ev- 
erything is known and so very many things foreseen, this 
prophecy was accompanied by another. " Why, perhaps 
now Aleshka may improve his position ! Certainly it is 
hard upon him to have to bear such a blow, for who does 



HARD TIMES. 189 

not pity his own flesli and blood ? But, on the other hand, 
nobody can pry into God's designs. Who knows but what 
God in his wisdom — At all events, Aleshka will have a 
chance ; certainly his prospects may improve." 

As a matter of fact, the children did die, and, as a matter 
of fact also, Aleshka did begin to improve. 

Such are the incidents which sometimes " save " a peas- 
ant from inevitable ruin ! Each for himself. Near is my 
shirt, but nearer is my skin. The commune has been trans- 
formed into a pack of galley-slaves, each of whom endeav- 
ors to minimize his share of the burden and responsibilities. 

The commune asks for an advance from the zemstvo. 
The zemstvo accedes to the demand, and sends in a subsidy 
only sufficient, as a matter of course, to assist the needy 
families. In a village composed of some twenty house- 
holds there are, let us say, five families which are destitute. 
The money, or the provision of corn, sent by the zemstvo 
is accordingly sufficient to relieve only these five families ; 
but the subsidy is advanced to the mir as a whole, under 
its collective responsibility. The zemstvo cannot have deal- 
ings with, or rely upon the solvency of, Peter or of John, 
and other private individuals who may be soliciting its as- 
sistance. Now, as the whole village is answerable for the 
cost of the supplies sent, the peasants say, " If I shall have 
to pay, let me have my share too." It is resolved, there- 
fore, at the mir's meeting that the subsidy shall be divided 
among all, apportioning, moreover, the shares according to 
the number of "souls" in each household. The "soul," 
which is the unit for measuring the working capacities of 
each household (as well as the amount of land apportioned 
to it), at the same time represents the liability of each 
household with regard to all those taxes and payments and 
duties of any kind, which fall on the commune in a lump. 

Thus, in the distribution of the zemstvo's subsidy, the 
richest family, which represents five " souls," and lias five 



190 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

shares of land, will receive most of the corn ; the raediuin- 
sized, representing three souls, will have three shares. As 
to the landless bohyl, who is economically a cipher, because 
he does not stand even for a fraction of a " soul," he re- 
ceives nothing at all, though he may have the largest fami- 
ly and be the most needy. People do not want to be an- 
swerable for him. If he is reluctant to resort to the usual 
expedient of "going for morsels," he must reborrow the 
subsidy at its full valuation and upon his own responsibili- 
-ty, from his well - to - do neighbors, who have received it 
without any individual payment. 

No wonder that the barefooted horde in its turn shows 
no particular good-will to its well-to-do fellow-villagers. 

Ivan Ermolaeff grumbles. He is a typical " gray mou- 
jik," this Ivan Ermolaeff. Though with a slight leaning 
towards the koulaks, he retains all the traditions and tastes 
of a genuine peasant in their full intensity, and hates, and 
despises all non-agricultural profits as unbecoming a moujik. 
He is far cleverer than another "gray moujik" of our ac- 
quaintance, Ivan Afanasieff, whom we introduced to the 
reader in a former chapter. 

While puny Ivan Afanasieff, with all his diligence and 
ardent love for the land, is unmistakably on the high-road 
to become a landless batrak, energetic and ready-witted 
Ivan Ermolaeff will certainly hold his own, at all events for 
many years to come. 

Working all the year round like a galley-slave, Ivan Er- 
molaeff makes both ends meet, and " does not suffer from 
hunger," which is the beau ideal of a gray moujik. 

Yet he grumbles. He grumbles not against his hard lot, 
which he supports with stoical endurance, but against the 
people, against his fellow-villagers. 

" You try to improve your position, and your neighbors 
do their best to ruin you." 

" How can that be ? Why should they do it ?" 



HARD TIMES. 191 

" I do not know ; since they do do it, they must certain- 
ly have some reason. * You are doing well, I am doing 
badly.' * Well, let us so arrange matters that you shall do 
badly too.' *It will put all upon the same level.' Judge 
for yourself. We have here a forest belonging to the com- 
mune. Everybody receives a part of it for his own per- 
sonal use. Well, I have hewn my wood, grabbed up the 
ground, have generally improved it, and transformed it into 
arable land. As soon as I have by my own labor obtained 
more land, they shout, * Let us have a redistribution ! You 
hold more land than those who pay for the same number 
of souls. The quantity of communal land has increased ; 
let us have a redistribution !' " 

**But is not everybody free to reclaim his part of the 
waste land?" 

" Yes, but everybody is not willing to do it. Herein lies 
the difference — some are not strong enough, others are too 
lazy. I am up before the dawn, I work in the sweat of my 
brow, I harvest more crops. Oh, they will take it from me, 
you may depend upon it." 

" And do you think it will be of any great advantage to 
them?" 

"Not at all. Each will receive a bagatelle, a mere strip, 
a narrow slip of land. They have twice played me this 
same trick. It is useless to try to improve my position." 

"And are there many people in your village who are 
thus hindering you ?" 

" Certainly, many. The rich bar my way, and the poor 
bar my way likewise." 

A new stream of feeling, which is anything but benevo- 
lent, is springing up in the villages among the disinherited 
" victims " of the social struggle, which bodes evil both to 
social order and to their victorious brethren. 

Formerly the peasants used to hate their masters, the 
nobles, and the tchinovniks, who, rod in hand, managed the 



192 THE KUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

manorial estates. This hatred, however bitter, fell on out- 
siders, who formed a small body of people, who were al- 
lowed to oppress and torture the peasants by the Czar's 
sufferance, not by any power of their own. 

At the present day the bitterest enemies to the people 
are singled out from among their own ranks. They form 
a detached and numerous class, which has its adherents and 
agents and supporters. The hatred they inspire in millions 
of the peasants is as legitimate as that inspired by the 
slave -owning nobility in times of yore. Modern hatred 
assumes the character of class - hatred, and extends to the 
whole social system, of which the rural pkitocracy is the 
necessary outcome. 



CHAPTER V. 

"Every time I happened to meet or to speak to the 
peasant Havrila Volkov," says Uspensky, "I invariably 
think how dreadful it will be to witness the time when this 
Volkov shall let loose the fierce hatred and rage which lie 
hidden in the depths of his heart, and are at present only 
discovered in the cruel expression of his eyes and mouth, 
and by the harsh tones of his voice. For when the out- 
ward pressure which holds him down shall be removed, his 
hidden passions will immediately assume the form of a 
powerful, revengeful, and pitiless giant, raising an enormous 
cudgel against everything and everybody. 

" A man of herculean strength, Havrila Volkov is also 
undoubtedly endowed with great mental energy. But the 
transition period through which we are passing, though al- 
ready protracted to such an abnormally long time, has pro- 
vided no solid food for the popular intelligence to digest; 
indeed, hardly any food at all, because during all this time 
nothing has been so thwarted and obstructed as the influ- 
ences which might have resulted in a sound development of 
the popular intelligence. Owing to this, Havrila's mind is 
only distorted, disconcerted, unhealthily excited by vague 
rumors and hopes, and as unhealthily depressed by other 
rumors of an opposite nature. * Money '—this is the only 
immutably solid thing amid all the contradictions and un- 
certainties of life. 

*^ Havrila is now about forty years of age. He was born, 
and grew into young manhood, in the days of serfdom, 
though people were already talking about the coming Eman- 
cipation. 
13 



194 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

" These rumors grew more persistent, and with them the 
hopes for the future grew stronger and brighter. Serfdom 
was at last abolished. Their lord, whom Havrila's parent 
served, mortgaged his estate and disappeared. The manor- 
house stood deserted and locked up. The hateful past 
seemed to be blotted out forever. Yet people had to work 
harder than before, because the peasants' land had been 
curtailed and their expenses had increased. They could 
not live by the land alone, and were forced to go to town 
to seek work there. Havrila's family, however, ruled by a 
hard and despotic father, preserved a comparative affluence, 
because kept together by the strong hand of its head ; but 
it was trying to have to bear his despotism. He took all 
the money earned by his sons. One brother earned more, 
another less; for equal skill was not required for their re- 
spective work. 

" They were all put on an equal footing by the absolute 
rule of their father, which appeared to Havrila to be noth- 
ing less than wanton tyranny. To become rich through 
husbandry had gone out of fashion. The method which 
had come to be much in vogue was to gain wealth by spec- 
ulation and by usury. A constant rage was gnawing at Hav- 
rila's heart ; the family had eaten up such a lot of his own 
earnings that if he had used it in speculative ventures he 
might by that time have been as rich and as respected as 
their neighbor Cheremukhin, who had started in business 
with a solitary sixpence in his pocket. Domestic despotism 
oppressed him to no purpose. By agricultural work, how- 
ever hard, it was futile to try to match Cheremukhin's 
profits. 

*^As time moved on, the despotic habits of the father, 
instead of taming down, became daily more oppressive. 
Taxes were increasing, the family stood in need of more 
money — t.e., the work grew heavier and heavier, otherwise 
the greater expenditure could not be met, and Cheremukhin 



HARD TIMES. 195 

would swallow them up. All this only stirred up Havrila's 
rage the more. His father ought to let him live by him- 
self on his own earnings, and after what fashion he liked. 
But the old man would not hear of it, and squeezed him 
ever closer in the effort to make both ends meet. 

"Yet all this relentless work notwithstanding, ruin was 
always imminent. If by ill-luck the horse should one day 
perish, they would be compelled to implore Cheremukhin's 
assistance, and it would be all over with their independence. 
But just look at Cheremukhin ; he could impose his yoke 
on everybody, while nobody could impose a yoke on him, 
and he was a stranger to poverty and hard labor. 

"To what purpose all this? Wherefore this eternal 
drudgery, which gave neither ease nor independence in 
return ? Havrila and his brothers had on several occasions 
tried to rebel against their father's despotism, but had learn- 
ed that this despotism was strong, and had moreover the 
support of the mir, who could flog the irreverent sons. 
Rancor brooded in Havrila's heart — rancor against his 
father, against work, and against taxation, resentment to- 
wards Cheremukhin, and envy of his easily won wealth ; 
indignation at the paucity of land, and the multitude of 
rates and taxes imposed upon the peasants. Forever work- 
ing, forever paying, without any profit for yourself or for 
the household. There was only one thing that Havrila 
understood with perfect clearness, i,e,, that money was the 
solution of all problems, and the means wherewith all dif- 
ficulties might be settled. One needed only to make mon- 
ey. With money you were free as a bird ; you could buy 
everything, sell it, and buy it back again. 

" At last the despotic father died, Havrila immediately 
separated from the others, and he and his wife started a 
new household. He had no faith left in agriculture, which 
had become hateful to him ; yet he was still compelled to 
live by this work, and under far more distressing conditions 



196 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

than before. Thenceforth he was the only full-grown la- 
borer in the household. Instead of rising to it, as he had 
expected, he sank immeasurably below the level of his ideal, 
Cheremukhin. After his separation he could hardly keep 
the wolf from the door. All the year round he dwelt in 
dirt, in poverty, and in interminable, ungrateful work, with- 
out hope or respite. 

"A passionate desire to make their way in the world 
absorbed all the thoughts of Havrila and his wife — an en- 
ergetic and stern woman. They must have money, no mat- 
ter by what means. No kind of swindling came amiss to 
Havrila, provided it promised to forward his aim — wealth. 
He had heard that Cheremukhin pressed hay and sold it at 
a profit in St. Petersburg. He was also told that damaged 
hay often passed undetected among the good — who can see 
what is put into the middle of a bundle of hay ? Havrila 
commenced to speculate in rotten hay. He found custom- 
ers, and at first sold them several cart-loads of sound hay, 
then palmed off a lot of spoiled stuff all in one consign- 
ment, and then disappeared. He repeated this operation 
successfully with several people in different parts of St. Pe- 
tersburg, and had begun to make a little money, though 
the amount was very small as yet, when one day he was 
caught in the act, dragged to the police-station, and indict- 
ed before a magistrate. He lied and prevaricated like any 
conjurer, but could not exculpate himself, and was locked 
up, and lost both hay and money. 

" Swindling had proved a failure, though he knew by 
many examples that this was not always so. Exasperated 
by his losses and his humiliation, Havrila applied his mind 
with redoubled energy to the discovery of some new means 
whereby he might retrieve his fortunes. He eagerly caught 
at any information which bore in any way upon money- 
making. Events at St. Petersburg {i.e., the attempt against 
the Emperor's life) gave rise to a great many vague and ir- 



HARD TIMES. 197 

ritating rumors among the masses. One day, on passing 
by a manorial wood, Havrila met a gentleman in a gig, a 
gun slung behind his shoulders, and a wild-duck, just shot, 
lying at the foot of the box. With one flash all the wick- 
edness and spite which lay fermenting in Havrila's head 
and soul broke forth into a brutal desire * to catch the gen- 
tleman and hand him over to justice. It is all the work of 
gentkmen {i,e,, these attempts) who are set against the Czar. 
I will earn a reward. . . . Poaching in the Czar's woods . . . 
first-rate chance ... a reward !' And Havrila, though per- 
fectly indifferent to the interests of the Crown, forthwith 
flew at the gentleman, like a robber, snatched at his gun 
and the duck, climbed into the gig, and, seizing the reins, 
drove him as a prisoner at full speed to the village. ... * A 
gentleman without a passport . . . caught by me in the Czar's 
woods . . . identify him !' shouted Havrila, with the evident 
desire of making as much noise and scandal as possible. 

" When the superintendent officer had listened to Hav- 
rila's exultant report of his exploit he warned him : *I shall 
advise this gentleman to take an action out against you for 
violent assault. Out of my sight, you idiot !' Havrila did 
as a matter of fact have to appear before the magistrate, 
but the gentleman spared him, and he therefore bowed low 
to him, craving his pardon, while in his breast he was boil- 
ing over with rage against the gentleman, the authorities, 
and his own stupidity. 

" * No,' he secretly resolved, * one must rob. There is 
nothing for it but to rob.' 

" An intense desire to appropriate things belonging to 
others, particularly money, assumed in him the strength of 
a devouring passion. Side by side with this covetousness 
there grew upon Havrila and his wife, who understood her 
husband's wishes at a glance, a kind of austere avarice. 
They had never spent a penny on tea or sugar ; since Hav- 
rila had separated from his relatives he had not smoked one 



198 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

ounce of tobacco nor drunk one glass of brandy. Never 
did he exchange a friendly word with anybody, unless ex- 
pecting to reap some profit by it. If he had called on you 
he would have squeezed something out of you in some way 
or other before he left ; on that you might depend. He 
would literally compel you to submit to the necessity of 
being cheated by him. His object once attained, he would 
not stop at your house one minute longer; but in case of 
failure he would drink three samovars, and sit for five hours 
as dumb as an idol, until he had contrived to gain at least 
some of his ends. 

"If he had nothing to expect from you he would pay 
you no attention, perhaps not recognize you at all. On 
looking at his cruel face and harsh eyes, which made every 
attempt to smile Mike a peasant' simply pitiful, one felt 
that a reserve of strength that boded no good lay hidden 
in this dark soul. 

" A dark night, a deserted, out-of-the-way thoroughfare, 
a drunken wayfarer with a bundle of bank - notes in his 
pocket, and a blow with an iron pole-axe on the temple, 
must have often flashed through this energetic but benighted 
brain as the * real thing,' the only solution to all diflSculties. 

" Cherishing such ideas and such feelings as these in his 
breast, Havrila was nevertheless compelled to drudge away 
at the land. He had three children, all under age, and he 
worked briskly and vigorously, though sullenly. He kept 
down the bile and spite and rage which were devouring 
him, but he gnawed at the bit. When his opportunity 
came he would give rein to his rebellious temper, and 
would take a frightful revenge for the enforced submissive- 
ness of years, and for the trampling down of his own natu- 
ral feelings; for the slow murder of his two 'superfluous' 
children, despatched by himself and his wife to the other 
world as untoward obstacles ; for the humiliations of pov- 
erty, and for the galling drudgery of hateful toil." 



HARD TIMES. 199 

Another interesting character in Uspensky's gallery, Ivan 
Bosykh, is a person of totally different temper and nature. 
He is, indeed, the kindest and the most benevolent of men. 
But he is one of the regular ** victims " in the economical 
struggle, and the trying circumstances of his position have 
exasperated him to such an extent as to have converted him 
into certainly quite as dangerous a character as Havrila. 

"Ivan Bosykh belongs," says Uspensky, "to that useless 
and miserable class of beings whose existence is incompre- 
hensible, even disgraceful in a country like Russia, but who 
nevertheless do exist, and during the last twenty years have 
been constantly on the increase ; a class which, willingly or 
unwillingly, must be designated as Vrural proletariats.' 

" Bosykh, when sober, is the kindest of men, and an ex- 
cellent worker, having ' golden hands,' as the peasants say 
nowadays. However, he is rarely seen to advantage. Only 
a few years ago it was otherwise. Then Ivan Bosykh was 
in all respects an exemplary moujik, and his household, 
though not rich, was united and orderly — * pleasant to be- 
hold,' to use his fellow - villagers' expression. Now he is 
the poorest batrak in the village. His cottage is fallen into 
decay. The window-panes are broken, and the gaps stopped 
up with dirty rags. He beats his wife, a clever, industrious 
woman, and remarkably beautiful, whom he married for 
love. She took a summons out against him. His three 
ragged children wander about the village all day long, cared 
for by nobody, and hungry. If you make inquiries about 
bim in the village you will receive the most unfavorable 
references. He has sold the same hay. three times over to 
three different persons, and spent all the money in drink. 
He borrowed money on his heifer in three different shops, 
but paid it over to none of them, having sold it meanwhile 
to a fourth and spent the money, as usual, in drink. 

** The history of Ivan Bosykh's ruin and moral degrada- 
tion is instructive because it is so commonplace — hundreds 



200 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

of thousands of Ivan Bosykhs have been ruined in exactly 
the same manner. If Bosykh fell lower than some, it ^Yas 
merely because, being more sensitive, he was more subject 
to despah'. 

'' The chief instruments of his ruin were, as usual, the 
village usurers, the koulaks. It began slowly at first. To 
begin with, his land was curtailed, the meadow and pasture 
lands were retained by the landlord, while the taxes in the 
mean time were increased — a common, oft-repeated story. 
With a young family like his, Ivan Bosykh could not avoid 
the necessity of now and then applying for small loans to 
fill up the gaps in his balance-sheet. 

" * Then,' he explains, * one creditor bothers you for one 
ruble, another for two. You make shift and pay — with 
interest. Interest here, interest there — and lo ! there is a 
new gap which you had not noticed before.' 

"For a long time Ivan Bosykh struggled bravely against 
heavy odds, which he thought would be only temporary, 
and kept himself more or less above water, when a * sudden 
visitation ' overtook him and felled him to the ground. His 
two horses. and his cow were killed by the murrain. In 
this desperate position Ivan Bosykh applied to a regular 
koulak, his brother-in-law. By dint of supplication and the 
intercession of his wife Ivan Bosykh bought a horse from 
his brother-in-law, on credit, for thirty-five rubles, to be paid 
in the spring, though the beast had cost the koulak no 
more than fifteen rubles. But Ivan accepted this deliver- 
ance even at that price, and thanked his kinsman most hum- 
bly for his kindness. 

" As he had only one horse to feed, his brother-in-law 
offered to buy his hay. Ivan Bosykh, greatly pressed for 
money as he was, agreed to part with his hay for five co- 
pecks per stone. Soon after, he had to dispose of his heifer^ 
as he could not feed it well after the death of his -cow. 
His brother-in-law bought it for five rubles, and a few weeks 



HARD TIMES. 201 

later Bosykh learned that he had resold it for twenty-five 
rubles. He also learned that the hay he had parted with 
at five copecks per stone had been resold in the town for 
twenty copecks, his brother-in-law making a net profit of 
full eleven copecks per stone. 

" When Bosykh, after having delivered a lot of hay to 
his brother-in-law, tried to get rid of him, as he had a per- 
fect right to do, and found another hay merchant, willing 
to pay him a more reasonable price — ten copecks per stone 
— his brother-in-law grew furious, and charged him with 
base ingratitude. Another koulak, Parfenoff by name, the 
man who had packed Bosykh's hay, and whom in hanging 
his customer Bosykh had * robbed ' of a part of his profits, 
made common cause with his brother -in -law. Together 
they tried to enforce obedience on their common victim. 

"As Bosykh refused to sell for five copecks what he 
could sell for ten, they resolved to take the horse from him ; 
without a horse he would be altogether prevented from work- 
ing his farm. The brother-in-law and ParfenofE tried to 
lead off the horse from Bosykh's house by force. A scuffle 
ensued, in which Bosykh proved to be the strongest. Upon 
this the brother-in-law lodged a complaint against Bosykh 
before the village tribunal. Here Parfenoff was one of the 
judges, and the other judges were his friends. A glass of 
wine here, a bottle of beer there — the verdict was, to take 
the horse from the defendant, and to give him twenty 
strokes with the rod for having boxed Parfenoff and his 
own brother-in-law on the ears. 

" * I was not present at the trial,' said Ivan Bosykh. 
* After the verdict a policeman was sent to my house: 
" You must go to the volost," he said. " What for ?" 
"You are to be flogged." "Oh no, not I." "Yes, you 
are, though." " No, I won't. Tell them to flog somebody 
else, if they like." I grew quite furious,' he continued. 
*"How is this?" said I to myself; " our lords flogged us when 



202 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

we were serfs, and now, when that is over, a simple moujik 
like myself can flog me because I will not voluntarily allow 
him to rob me of my own !" I gave this scoundrel' (brother- 
in-law) ^ one hundred rubles' worth of my toil, but he re- 
quires more, and means to flog me into obedience.' 

" Bosykh resolved to make a firm stand for his rights. 
The horse was his rightful property by the terms of his 
agreement, whereby payment for it became due in the fol- 
lowing spring, six months hence. He appealed against the 
judgment of the village court, and declared that he would 
not give up the beast. But it was easier to come to this 
resolution than to keep it. A few days later the brother- 
in-law, Parfenoff, and the village elder, who was also a kou- 
lak of the same stamp, entered his house, breaking the door 
of the house open with an improvised battering-ram, as well 
as those of the stable, where the horse lay hidden, and led 
it away in triumph. 

" * You expected that we should await the decision of the 
court ?' said the elder, who led the band. * No ! with such 
knaves as you we conduct things in a more speedy fashion, 
mind that ! And you will be flogged into the bargain, take 
my word for it. Perhaps you want to lodge a complaint 
against me? Please try it. We have sentenced you to 
twenty lashes now ; after that you will receive a hundred 
and twenty.' On this they retired. 

** * Thus,' says Bosykh, 'I was left without ray horse, and 
such a rage took possession of me that it seemed as though 
the very devil had entered into my body. My wife began 
to weep over our ruin; I flew at her like a madman. By 

! I do not know how I could have had the heart to 

raise my hand against her. She began to cry, and this only 
increased my fury. I left her at last, and ran straight to 
the tavern. Here I promised the inn-keeper to sell him my 
hay, at two copecks a stone, provided he would give me 
wine ; and I drank and drank till I lost my senses. I could 



HARD TIMES. 203 

not reach my house, but stumbled into a ditch, with my face 
in the mud, and fell asleep. How long I lay there I do not 
know. The cold awakened me, and I opened my eyes. The 
moon was up ; in the village the girls were singing their 
songs. I arose. In passing by Parfenoff's house I saw the 
whole party through the window — the elder and my broth- 
er-in-law among them, grouped round the table, on which 
stood a boiling samovar and a bottle of wine. They were 
celebrating their triumph. All my fury returned at once. 
I rushed into ParfenofiE's house just as I was, besmeared 
with mud, and barefoot, because I had left my boots at the 
tavern in exchange for drink. I went straight up to the 
elder, and treated him to a sound rap on the snout; then I 
did the same to Parfenoff, and then to my brother-in-law. 
They rushed at me. But no ! I was quite in earnest this 

time. ** I will kill you, you d d scoundrels 1" I shouted. 

** Give me wine, you rascals !" All my strength returned to 
me at this moment. I should have crushed, with one blow, 
the first who had dared to approach me; and they knew it, 
too, for they left me alone and sent for help. I sat at the 
table, drank up the wine, and then with the empty bottle 
struck the looking-glass, which fell to pieces, and in its 
descent knocked the tea-tray to the floor. 

" * In the mean time help had arrived. They knocked 
me down, bound my hands, and put me under lock and key. 
All three sent in their complaints against me. I was sum- 
moned to appear before the tribunal, but I would not go, 
and went to the tavern instead. They passed a verdict of 
" contumacy " against me, and sentenced me to be flogged. 
They summoned me for the execution of the sentence. I 
would not go. They sent for me three times. I spat in 
their messenger's face and told him that I would not go. 
In defence of their three snouts they sentenced me to up- 
wards of one hundred strokes. I held fast to my resolution 
not to submit. Thank God, there were other good people 



204 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

in the village to support me. Thus I succeeded in escaping 
from their clutches up to Lady Day, my chief consolation 
in the mean while being the tavern. By this time my new 
friend, the merchant to whom I had agreed to deliver the 
hay, began to threaten me with a writ. But how could I 
bring my hay into the town when I had no horse? Be- 
sides which, the tavern-keeper required the same hay, be- 
cause I owed it to him for drink. I could not look people 
in the face for very shame. 

" * When Lady Day had passed I heard the tinkling of 
little bells, and saw three troikas (carriages drawn by three 
horses) running into the village. It was the elder, the jury, 
and the stanovoi. My heart sank within me at the sight. 
They stopped just before my gate, entered my house, and 
called a village meeting. " The taxes !" No means to es- 
cape was left me. People began to bring their taxes, and 
the elder approached the stanovoi, and pointing to me said, 
" This peasant, your Excellency, was four times sentenced 
by the tribunal for having insulted, first his brother-in-law, 
then me, then Parfenoff, and then his brother-in-law again. 
He was twenty times summoned to attend at the volost, 
but he will not obey, and offers resistance. Moreover, he 
does not pay his taxes. Will you permit us to execute the 
verdict at once ?'' 

*' * It was then that they laid me down. It was then that 
I lost my reason and my shame and my conscience. I lay 
on the ground like a log, and they lashed me, and lashed 
me again, in virtue of all four resolutions. I lay there, and, 

will you believe it ? I was frightened of myself ! By , 

yes! frightened of myself, frightened to jump to my feet, 
frightened to move, lest I should slay the first whom my 
hand could reach. At last I perceived that the hounds had 
taken rather a liking to the operation. " Enough !" I cried, 
and in such a voice that they stopped at once, the d — — d 
scoundrels ! 



HARD TIMES. 205 

" * Well, from that time forth I was a lost man. Lost-^ 
absolutely lost ! Everything became disgusting to me, the 
work, the house, the light of day. The tavern grew to be 
my only consolation. I began even to steal! Everything 
went from bad to worse, and I doubt now whether there 
will ever again be any chance for me to retrieve myself. 
Something dreadful will happen, I am sure. I am quite 
beside myself from exasperation. A mortal anguish is 
gnawing at my heart. The evil one is whispering in my 
ear. Oh, he will incite me to something horrible ! I shall 
end in the galleys, take my word for it.' " 

Ivan Bosykh is one sample drawn from a number — an 
illustration of the feelings which are surging in the hearts 
of our toiling millions. This state of things must natu- 
rally lead to some practical manifestation on the part of 
the disinherited. 

The " red cock," or wilful arson of another man's prop- 
erty, this favorite means of revenge within the power of the 
weak of heart, is no rare guest in modern Russian villages. 
Our meek and patient peasantry are, however, beginning to 
learn even fiercer methods of retaliation. There is ample 
evidence in the reports of foreign correspondents (Russian 
papers are not allowed to mention such delicate subjects) 
that agrarian crimes like those at one time of such frequent 
occurrence in Ireland are beginning to strike root upon Rus- 
sian soil. Sometimes they assume the character of a sol- 
emn public execution. The most striking, so far, has been 
that recently perpetrated by the peasants of a village in the 
Insar district (province of ,Pensa), who at their public meet- 
ing passed a resolution to put the land-agent of their land- 
lord to death, and went in a body and carried this resolu- 
tion into effect. For this offence fourteen peasants were 
sentenced to death in October, 1887, by a court-martial, and 
two were actually hanged on November 24th — a drastic sen- 
tence, and a drastic proceeding, evidently intended to strike 



206 THB RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

terror into the peasantry ; because, according to Russian law 
and every -day practice, all crimes, save political ones, are 
I tried before a jury, and there is no capital punishment for 
any common offence. 

Still, if we take into consideration the enormity of the 
popular sufferings, and the paucity of agrarian crime and 
agrarian disturbance of nny kind, we must admit that the 
Russian peasants practically keep very quiet. 

Where lies the source of this phenomenal endurance dis- 
played by a mass of several scores of millions of people, 
whose bitter dissatisfaction with their lot admits of no 
shadow of doubt ? 

In the character of our race ? In our people's past his- 
tory or present political superstitions ? Each of these causes 
must certainly have had its share of influence, though they 
are but secondary ones, which cannot explain this strange 
fact satisfactorily. We, for our part, think that the main 
cause of it lies elsewhere, and is this : the moral, political, 
and social discontent seething in the heart of the rural pop- 
ulation of Russia has found a sort of safety-valve in the 
new evolution of religious thought which nowadays covers 
almost the whole field of the intellectual activity of the 
Russian laborinjr classes. Almost the whole moral and in- 

CD 

tellectual force produced by the modern Russian peasantry 
runs in the channel of religion ; religion engrosses the lead- 
ing minority of the people, who understand most thorough- 
ly and feel most keenly the evils of the day, and who alone 
would be able to put themselves at the head of any vast 
popular movement. That religion should play this part of 
intercessor between popular discontent and its logical out- 
come — open rebellion — is all the more natural and unavoid- 
able, inasmuch as our new popular religions are not merely 
a protest against, but to some extent a cure for, the evils 
against which the popular conscience is the most indignant. 
The religious enthusiasm proper to all new sects has re^ 



HARD TIMES. 207 

established — for a time at least — more fraternal relations 
between those men who adhere to them, and has subdued 
the fierce and cynical struggle for economical predominance 
which is raging in our villages. 

This interesting process we will endeavor to investigate 
in its fulness in the following studies upon popular religion. 



POPULAR RELIGION. 



CHAPTER I. 

Are the Russian peasants so very religious? 

This question, of the highest importance both in the 
present and for the future, has attracted a good deal of at- 
tention. Russians and foreigners, travellers and scholars, 
journalists and folk-lorists, historians and ethnographers, 
have dealt with it more or less exhaustively. 

The prevailing opinion among foreigners is that the Rus- 
sian peasants, though imbued with many superstitions, are 
nevertheless a very religious race. Among those Russian 
observers and scholars who are recognized as the best au- 
thorities on the subject, the contrary opinion predominates, 
though it is far from being universal. 

Thus the most prominent of our historians, N. Kostoma- 
rov, who unites to his vast erudition an unrivalled historical 
insight, is of opinion that the modern orthodox peasants — 
of whom alone we are speaking here — are at much the same 
stand-point as were their forefathers, the Muscovites, of the 
seventeenth century, and they, according to Kostomarov, 
"were remarkable for a state of such complete religious 
indifference as to be without a parallel in the annals of 
Christian nations." Another historian, S. M. Solovieff, of 
Moscow, draws from the same facts a different conclusion, 
extolling throughout his work the " deep devotion " of the 
Russians to their creed. 



POPULAR RELIGION. 209 

A numerous group of young scholars, who make the study 
of popular religions their specialty — such as Yousoff, Abra- 
mov, Prugavin, and others — adhere entirely to the opinion 
of Kostomarov ; while the whole body of the Slavophils, 
among whom are men of undoubted sincerity and learn- 
ing, will swear by all they hold sacred that there never was 
nor will be another people so pious as the Russians. The 
great novelist, Count Leo Tolstoi', is pretty much of the 
same opinion, though with him it springs from an entirely 
different source. 

We do not in the least intend to imply by all this that 
the question we are about to consider is insoluble. To the 
best of our comprehension, it is not only soluble, but al- 
ready solved, with as ample an array of documentary proof 
as questions of this class admit of. It is, however, quite 
evident that it must by its very nature remain a complicated 
and tangled problem. 

To completely unravel it is an impossible task. Many of 
these discrepancies have their origin in the preconceived 
ideas of the observers, who are quite capable of seeing 
white where it is really black. Discrepancies in the bare 
statements of impressions and facts admit of no reconcili- 
ation, and must be left to the judgment of those who may 
care to investigate for themselves. Much, however, depends 
also on the light in which different persons view the same 
facts, and the various manifestations of the spiritual life of 
our people. With regard to this, much may be done tow- 
ards both explaining and removing misconceptions and mis- 
understandings. 

If wc follow the peasants in their every-day life we shall 
hear God's name uttered at every step. The will and bid- 
dings of God are constantly mentioned as the base of the 
moral and social code. 

A peasant in the act of engaging himself, in some time 
of distress, to work on the estate of his well-to-do neighbor, 
14 



210 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

is unwilling, perhaps, to enter into a formal agreement at 
the communal office. ** Never mind," he says to his em- 
ployer, " I know you will settle with me in a godly way ;" 
which means fairly, without taking advantage of his pres- 
ent helplessness. 

Two sons of a deceased father are mayhap quarrelling 
about their inheritance, each thinking that he has claims to 
a larger share than the other is inclined to admit. They 
will go and choose an old man as arbiter, and they will say, 
"Judge between us in a godly way ;" which means accord- 
inoj to the hiojhest standard of his moral consciousness, 
which is supposed to be superior to the laws of common 
justice. The old man will thereupon divide the money and 
the other property, for instance, according to the individual 
claims of each, calculated, let us say, upon the basis of the 
number of years they have been workers in the family 
(which is common law) ; but the stock of corn left in the 
granary he will divide equally between the two. That is 
more godly, according to his notion. The assistance given 
to the sick and the destitute is a " godly act ;" disobedience 
to parents, injustice to an orphan, is a sin which God will 
punish. The name of God is constantly on the peasant's 
lips. God's will is the source and sanction for everything 
which is just, kind, humane. 

" Why, then," the reader will ask, ** does not this all 
mean that these people are very religious indeed V 

A disciple of Count Leo Tolstoi will certainly answer 
with an emphatic affirmative. And he will be quite right, 
from his dogmatic point of view. If we choose to apply 
the name of religion to a social philosophy which is based 
on a system of pure ethics, with no admixture of theology, 
these people may certainly be called religious. 

Baron Haxthausen represents the opposite extreme when 
he extols the extraordinary religiousness of the Russian 
peasants after having witnessed how fervently whole crowds 



POPULAR RELIGION. 211 

of them prostrate themselves before the ikons ; and he, too, 
is quite right, from his particular point of view. 

A savage extending his arms towards an idol, or bowing 
in wonder and admiration before the glorious vision of the 
morning sun, is certainly under the spell of religious emotion. 

Religious feeling is a complicated one, which we do not 
propose to analyze here. Our object is a purely practical 
one. Religion, in the common acceptation of the term, such 
as universal history has made it, is neither pure ethics nor 
pure theosophy. For us it implies a certain union of the 
two — of the ethical and theological, of the natural and su- 
pernatural. We all. Freethinkers and Christians alike, agree, 
moreover, in associating with the name of religion the idea 
of a great, sometimes an overwhelming, impulsive force of 
its own. 

This is indeed the reason why the study of religion has 
for us, as a rule, such an absorbing interest. 

But how is it possible to gauge the potential force of this 
agent in a given community — the Russian, for example? 
"Where lies the main source of the impulsive power of re- 
ligion? What are the symptoms of its presence? 

Disagreement on these points would necessarily lead to 
confusion and misunderstanding. In order, therefore, to 
avoid all possible misapprehension, we will in a few words 
explain our general stand-point. 

First of all, we take for granted the absolute indepen- 
dence of pure ethics from any religious doctrines. Human 
ethics, the moral principles which regulate the relations be- 
tween man and man, have a much broader basis than the 
doctrines of Christianity, or any religion whatsoever. They 
spring from the human heart, from man's social nature, and 
are manifested wherever men are thrown peacefully to- 
gether. When tribes first broke up into families, their 
founders learned, from the very nature of this new institu- 
tion, the first lessons of morality, and at once grasped the 



212 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

necessity of putting the comraon good before their private 
benefit. They learned to suppress their narrow and selfish 
interests for the sake of wider and far-reaching ones; the 
needs of the family ranked before those of the individual. 
The extension of the principles of raorality, which are the 
result of association, over large bodies of people, w^as the 
one vital condition of the survival and progress of all tribes 
as they issued from the woods ; and such of the older com- 
munities as have left any record of themselves at all were 
able to formulate principles of morality to which centuries 
of culture have not been able to add an iota. 

But civilization has performed a more difficult task, in 
constantly enlarging the circle which is comprised of those 
to whom morality is binding and transgression to its laws 
blameworthy. In the days of the Seven Sages this circle 
was coextensive with the walls of each town. In Italy, 
when x\lighieri was giving vent to his sublime indignation, 
and much later even than that, it was so still. The Middle 
Ages, with all their madonnas, saints, and legions of priests 
and monks — accredited preachers on the theme of Christian 
brotherhood and equality — had a code of morals whose 
benefits were confined to the mutual intercourse of the priv- 
ileged classes among themselves. The " villeins " were ex- 
cluded from its protection as completely as were the " bar- 
barians " of antiquity. 

Civilization has broken up these caste distinctions wdthin 
the nationalities. The dominion of human ethics has been 
extended, we will not say over the whole of the human race, 
because the colored races are evidently outside its pale as 
yet ; but we may, with the aid of a good deal of charity, say 
over the whole family of the white nations. Here the vio- 
lation of the first principles of morality, though still only 
too common, is always reproved by the public conscience 
with an earnestness which certainly increases with each suc- 
ceeding generation. 



POPULAR RELIGION. 213 

This widening of the spheres of human sympathy, which 
is the best result of the incipient fruits of civilization, was 
not the result of preaching, or teaching, or speculation. 
Sympathy, in any of its innumerable degrees, must be spon- 
taneously felt. People who do not instinctively care about 
one another can hardly be induced to do so by the persua- 
sion, entreaty, or command of some superior authority. 

Neither could the growth of knowledge, nor the spread 
of culture, as such, bring this about. But civilization has 
indirectly done it all by the marvellous broadening of the 
intellectual horizon of modern man, by introducing to him 
in spirit myriads of people who did not exist for his fore- 
fathers, and in holding before his mental vision that which 
is loftiest and noblest in all humanity. Civilization has, 
as yet, only to a very slight extent weakened the barriers 
of class institutions, but it has overthrown the barriers cre- 
ated by many prejudices, and it has destroyed the barriers 
of space; and herein lies the real cause of the spread of 
the idea of human brotherhood among men, which is now 
assuming an earnestness of purpose unknown to the world 
two, nay, even one short century ago. 

The instinct of sympathy, innate in man, is the source 
and creative principle of all which has life in human com- 
munities, as the sun's heat in the world of organic nature ; 
and, like the sun's heat, it asserts its creative force on the re- 
moval of the material obstacles which screen its vivifying rays. 

And what of religions ? We mean the great monothe- 
istic religions, which have played so mighty a part in shap- 
ing the destinies of mankind. These religions are the fairy 
daughters of these same sympathetic instincts, which they 
may be said to condense and absorb in enormous quantities, 
converting them into moving force. 

The founders of all the great historical religions were, 
above all, moral teachers, and gave expression to the broad- 
est conception of morals to which their century and nation 



214 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

had attained ; and among these none hiid more stress on 
human ethics, nor, in advocating tlic principle of love, gave 
utterance to words so deep and true and heart-reaching, as 
the great Galilean. Jesus of Nazareth certainly taught men 
to love one another. But the gospels written about Him, 
and the superstructure of religion bearing His name, enjoin 
us to love Christ, which is something very different. 

In all those religions of which we are speaking, the per- 
sonal human charm of the Founder and the poetry of His 
life have been the chief power wherewith the high, devo- 
tional, altruistic instincts of men have been stirred and riv- 
eted upon God, But Jesus, martyr upon earth and God 
in heaven ; Jesus shedding His blood and giving His life 
out of love for mankind, and for each man individually ; 
ever present to each one of His disciples as a living per- 
son ; standing ready to be the recipient of transports of 
gratitude and love in this world, and to pass them on in 
the world to come, has obtained a unique, an unparalleled 
command over the emotional side of human nature. 

This it is which gave to His religion the power to conquer 
the world. But by the same policy the educational, the hu- 
manizing elements, so prominent in the original doctrine of 
the Founder of Christianity, were pushed entirely into the 
background. The God Jesus absorbed and detached His 
worshippers from humanity, and monopolized them complete- 
ly for Himself. In other words. His figure was so enormous- 
ly magnified in the eyes of His worshippers as to render men 
and mankind, with all their petty cares, very insignificant 
objects of interest when compared with Him. The only val- 
uable service which a man full of love for his fellow-men 
could render to them was to convert them to the same faith, 
thus persuading them likewise to forget as much as was 
possible everything for which they were naturally most in- 
clined to care. Indifference to all which lay outside the 
pale of spiritual pursuits grew to be the essential character- 



POPULAR KEHGION. 215 

istic of the religion of Jesus. The beauty of His doctrine 
t'ind life were lost as a moral lesson and an example for men, 
and served only to facilitate the access to heaven by in- 
creasing the fervor of adoration, and by enhancing the 
fascination of His person. 

When the public mind is in its natural and ordinary 
state, the human love, pity, and enthusiasm called forth by 
Christianity only add to the spiritual enjoyments furnished 
by religion. And when in a man or in a nation religious 
emotions rise to their highest pitch and become vehement, 
gushing, irrepressible stimulants for action, these actions are 
self-centred ; their tendency always is to serve God and not 
humanity, and woe unto humanity when the thing of God 
clashes with the thini^ of man ! 

But what is the thing of God? What does God com- 
mand? What will redound to the glory of God's name, 
what to its abasement ? 

Every century, every epoch gives a different answer to 
these questions, creating its God after its own image. Thus 
it has come to pass that the Christian's heaven is peopled 
with as many different Christs as there have been generations 
of Christians. In our own noble and truly philanthropic 
century, we see Christ teach His followers the doctrine of 
Christian socialism. During the epoch of the great Eng- 
lish revolution, when the English middle class first awak- 
ened to a sense of its strength and independence, it was 
Christ who led Cromwell's battalions in those glorious fights 
for freedom ; it was Christ who sustained the civil courage 
of President Bradshaw ; it was He who guided the hand 
which wrote the Defence of the English people and the re- 
vindication of the freedom of the press. But Christ like- 
wise ordered the Smithfield executions, the massacres of St. 
Bartholomew, and the Spanish Inquisition. 

There is not a thing, however sublime, not a thing, how- 
ever abominable, which, in some time or place, religion in 



216 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

the name of Christ has not countenanced and peremptorily 
ordered. Bat whatever the difference in the moral and 
social value of these acts inspired by religion may be, they 
all exhibit the same characteristics of indomitable energy, 
straightforwardness, and intense exaltation, which measure 
neither the sufferings to be undergone nor those to be in- 
flicted on others. Religion as a direct agent in social life 
is an enormous but a neutral force, intensifying whatever it 
touches without creating any inner change. 

The really great and positive service rendered by religion 
to the cause of human progress has been an indirect one, 
and lies in the intellectual domain. Having by its very 
nature access to the most primitive intellects, those intel- 
lects which are absolutely proof against any other spiritual 
influence, the promptings of religion rapidly permeated al- 
most every particle of the body social, sometimes culminat- 
ing in one of those moral tempests which will fill remotest 
posterity with awe and consternation. They shook the firm 
rock of popular intellectual apathy and stagnation to its 
foundations, and awakened the people, as with an arch- 
angel's trumpet, from the torpor and smallness of narrow, 
every-day cares. They stirred millions, physically and mor- 
ally, and roused them into taking part in some kind of in- 
tellectual pursuit. It is doubtful indeed whether any other 
force than religion could have done this to the same extent ; 
and this is why the epochs of great religious excitement 
were those wherein the human mind made its most aston- 
ishing advances. 

In this attempt to sketch the state of religious feeling 
among the bulk of the Russian peasantry, we will consider 
religion, exclusively from the above-named historical point 
of view, as an active or potential mover of the masses. 
"We cannot, therefore, dismiss the question by merely in- 
quiring how far our peasants are Christians in their ethical 
conceptions, or even their practical conduct. 



POPULAR RELIGION. 217 

Milton's Satan, in speaking to the young Son of Mary 
about the Athenian philosophy, observes very pertinently 

that 

" All knowledge is not couchM in Moses' law, 
The Pentateuch, or what the Prophets wrote ; 
The Gentiles also know, and write, and teach 
To admiration, led by Nature's light." 

The social conditions under which our peasantry lived 
for centuries have been favorable to the spontaneous de- 
velopment among them of such ** pan -human" morals. 
They are Christ-like as a matter of course. The infiltra- 
tion of actual Christian ethics among them is very probable, 
nay, certain, given such favorable ground ; but whether this 
be so to a great or only to a small extent, this does not in 
the least imply that Christianity as a religion has a strong 
hold over them. Furthermore, the fact that our people 
dub their whole system of morality with the name of relig- 
ion is equally inconclusive. The question we have to in- 
vestigate is, how far the channel between the natural and 
the supernatural is open with them, and how far they have 
the element of the supernatural stored up in their minds. 
We mean the supernaturalism of Christianity, because that 
of fetichism and paganism has no motive force in it. 



CHAPTER 11. 

It has been admitted that Christianity, as far as its 
ethics are concerned, must have actually filtered down to 
our peasantry. Eight centuries of oflScial Christianity 
could not pass over their heads without leaving some trace 
behind. But as in the Christian religion the theological 
doctrine goes hand in hand with the ethical, we are bound 
to admit that in the process of infiltration the people's 
natural predispositions have operated as a kind of endosmic 
disintegration of the religion ; while they accepted one part 
of the doctrine offered to them, they remained completely 
deaf to the other. It is undeniable that the bulk of our 
population has, up to the present day even, a very faint 
conception of the framework, as a whole, upon which the 
religion to which they oflScially belong is based. 

The Russian peasantry are still wallowing in superstitions. 
There is hardly a nation in Christendom which has a de- 
monology — a remnant of ancient paganism — so well elabo- 
rated and so deeply rooted as is that of the Russian peas- 
ants. Their apocryphal mythology can indeed vie with 
that of the ancients in the number of its deities, if not in 
their poetry. There are sylvan spirits and river spirits, 
both male and female, the naiads and the river-gods, and 
household spirits, lares, and penates, in whose existence and 
occasional apparition, and frequent interference in their 
household affairs, the peasants have an unshaken belief. 

With the advent of Christianity the heathen gods and 
goddesses were not annihilated, but only driven from 
heaven into hell. To have declared the gods which had 



POPULAR RELIGION. 219 



•«5:- 



reigned over the land for so many generations to be a mere 
fiction would have seemed a perfect absurdity ; but it was 
only too natural that the dethroned powers should resent 
the desertion of, and try to punish and worry, their former 
worshippers. Thus, in tlie eyes of the people they neces- 
sarily assumed the character of malignant spirits, waging 
constant war against them, and compelling them to be al- 
ways on their guard. Our forefathers, however, as well as 
the Russian peasants of to-day, were a peaceful and a cau- 
tious people. That which they most wished for was to be 
left to themselves by both the contending parties. They 
found it more expedient to buy their peace by bribing 
both, than to resolutely side with one party against the 
other. 

Christianity met with scarcely any resistance in taking 
possession of the country of St. Vladimir and his progeny; 
but many generations, nay, many centuries, after their con- 
version, professing Christians continued to worship their 
old heathen gods, according to their ancient rites, making 
sacrifices and offerings to them by the side of the water 
and at the foot of the trees, as the chroniclers and bishops 
complained throughout the Middle Ages. The worship of 
a 'heathen goddess known as " Holy Friday " was still preva- 
lent in the seventeenth century. The Czar Peter the Great 
issued a ukase against those who took part in these rites. 

Nowadays no formal worship of this goddess takes place, 
though she still retains a very prominent place in the popu- 
lar Olympus and, as Holy Friday, plays an important part 
in many apocryphal legends relating to hell and paradise. 
Thousands of customs and observances of flagrantly pagan 
origin are, however, faithfully preserved by our people. 
Fishermen still offer small propitiatory sacrifices to the 
river-gods, and each family does the same, so as to keep on 
good terms with its household deities. Sorcerers, who arc 
the priests of these malignant spirits, hold their own in the 



220 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

face of the pop, accredited minister though he be of the 
dominant creed, and are eagerly applied to as magicians 
and advisers. The pop is held in the more reverence, but 
the sorcerer is certainly more feared. The safest plan is to 
keep aloof from both, because even the pop is not always 
welcome either. He is all very well in church, at harvest 
festivals, at weddings, at christenings, and at the perform- 
ance of any other regular function of his oflSce ; but if you 
are ill-advised enough to take a pop on board your ship 
you will of a surety encounter a storm. If you meet him 
on the way you must expect some mishap to befall either 
yourself or your beasts. 

A dread of these chance meetings and dealinfi:s with the 
pop is shared by all the Russian peasantry. The official 
explanation as to the source of this not very flattering su- 
perstition is, that the peasants in past times were in the 
habit of being rebuked by their clergy for their heathenish 
practices. Is not, however, a more simple and more rational 
answer to the problem, and one which coincides better with 
the character of this superstition, to be found in the dread 
felt by the peasants, lest the inferior, malignant deities 
which sway the elements should be provoked to wrath and 
revenge by the evidence of any close connection between 
their enemy and the peasants ? 

Another instance of that sly wariness characteristic of 
uncertain minds is afforded bv the evident transfer of the 
worship at one time accorded to the chief heathen gods, 
to genuine, canonized saints of the Greek calendar. The 
Prophet Elias, for instance, owing probably to his extraor- 
dinary aeronautical experience recorded in the Bible, was 
invested by the popular imagination with the exclusive 
management of thunder and lightning. When it thunders, 
our people say, it is Elias the Prophet, who is driving in 
his chariot on the clouds. The flashes of lightning are the 
arrows he throws to the earth. It is he who sends or with- 



POPULAR RELIGION. 221 

holds rain or hail, and it is to him that special prayers are 
addressed when the crops are threatened with drought. He 
is, indeed, none other than the well-known Perun, god of 
thunder, clad in the raiments of the noble and fierce Tish- 
bite. 

St. Vlas, whose name suggests that of Volas, or Veles, the 
god of cattle, of vegetation (perhaps the sun-god), was con- 
verted, by popular fancy, into a substitute of the ancient 
protector of flocks and herds. This saint, however, shares 
his dominion with gallant St. George, who slew the dragon, 
and on whom the people look as their especial protector 
against wild beasts ; sometimes, too, as a sort of God's vice- 
gerent, running his errands on his magnificent charger. 

Of all the saints, St. Nicolas is perhaps the most popu- 
lar with the Russians. Half the heathen Zyrians worship 
him, and so do other savage aborigines of Siberia, and afford 
an interesting illustration of- the gradual transformation of 
Christianity into pure paganism. 

There is much that is grossly material in this worship of 
the saints in general. It is all very well for the orthodox 
catechism to declare that the worship of the ikons is a pure- 
ly spiritual one ; inasmuch as by it, through the power of 
the painter's brush, the memory of these holy men is kept 
fresh in the minds of the faithful. In the eyes of the peo- 
ple the ikon is a living thing — the very body of the saint, 
whose spirit dwells in it as the man's soul inhabits his cor- 
poreal frame. They believe that the ikon feels pain and 
pleasure, resents insults, and is gratified by kind treatment, 
just as a living being would be. In one of the popular 
legends, entitled " The Greedy Pop," we are told how St. 
Nicolas inflicted severe trials on the pop of his chapel for 
having, in a fit of spite (brought on by the small receipts of 
the chapel), struck the ikon of its patron saint with a bunch 
of keys. On finally forgiving the delinquent, merciful St. 
Nicolas warns him : " Go, but take care not to strike me 



222 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

Avith the keys on my bald pate again. Look! you Lave 
almost broken my skull." * 

These popular legends of ours, the outcome of the col- 
lective imagination of the illiterate peasantry, handed down 
by oral tradition from generation to generation, form docu- 
mentary evidence of the greatest value. Indeed, in them 
we have the only genuine expression of the religious ideas 
of the masses. They give us some idea, too, as to many 
other articles of popular faith as it really is, and not as the 
orthodox Church wishes it to be. 

I may mention here that w^hen the well-known folk-lorist, 
Athanasieff, in 1859, issued his volume of popular legends, 
its publication was peremptorily prohibited by the censors 
of the press. It is, of course, not easy to comprehend the 
wisdom of prohibiting the use in public libraries and by a 
few specialists, of matter which, in the form of oral tradi- 
tion, is the common property of millions ; but we may infer 
thereby that popular theology, as seen in these tales, is not 
exactly in accord with the teachings of the orthodox Greek 
Church. What, for instance, could be more heretical than 
the idea of the devil as the junior brother of God, and his 
copartner in the creation of the universe? Yet this is an 
exact account of what we find in the legend known as " Noe, 
the Godly." 

The devil is a great favorite with the popular muse, and is 
treated with remarkable fairness. He is represented as the 
enemy of man, doing his best to drag him down into hell. 
But as this is his trade he cannot help it, and the people 
bear him no malice in return. He is a good devil after all. 
When treated kindly he is capable of unselfish attachment ; 
even when provoked he sometimes shows a most praise- 
worthy forbearance and moderation in taking his revenge. 
One curious legend, "The Devil and the Smith," relates 

* Athanasieff legends. 



POPULAE RELIGION. 223 

how a smith took pity on the devil, whom all abused, and 
drew his portrait on the wall of his shop. Whenever he 
entered it he was wont to greet the devil's image thus : 
** How do you do, companion ?" For this kindly feeling 
the devil rewarded the smith by making him very skilful 
and prosperous in his trade. When, however, the smith died 
and his son succeeded to the business, the position of the 
devil was much chanored for the worse. Instead of n^reetinff 
him daily with a kind word, the young smith fell into the 
habit of dealing two or three blows with his hammer upon 
the devil's head, and every time he returned from church he 
spat in his face. For a long time the devil suffered this to 
go on, but at last he lost patience. " I have borne with 
these improprieties long enough," said he to himself. "I 
must take my revenge." He was as good as his word, and 
placed the young smith in a great predicament, the exact 
nature of which w^e will not record. But when the young 
man was already on his way to the scaffold the devil sud- 
denly appeared, and upon the promise being given that 
henceforth the young smith would treat him with the same 
respect as his father had shown before him, the devil saved 
him from an ignominious death, and set everything straight, 
to the satisfaction of all concerned. 

The whole bearing of the Christian theological system 
seems to be entirely lost upon the bulk of the people. God 
the Father and God the Son are two totally distinct per- 
sons, standing in the perfectly concrete relation towards 
each other of a father on the one hand and a son upon the 
other. The person of the son is represented with great 
sympathy and uniform consideration. He is the champion 
of the people, always siding with the poor moujik against 
his rich neighbor. But we should look in vain for any 
trace of genuine religious inspiration in the treatment of 
this figure. There is nothing which reveals the touch of a 
living image upon a living soul. He is introduced rather 



224 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

as an onlooker in stories about others, to illustrate popular 
views on certain points, and to solve certain problems. 
There is as little life in him, or passion about him, as in a 
secondary character introduced for the purpose of giving 
utterance to moral views in some imaginary story. As to 
the person of God the Father, he appears in the popular 
legends very vaguely delineated as a hard taskmaster, and 
whenever introduced by the popular muse is treated with a 
certain amount of ill-feeling and hostility. 

In the encounters with the " retired soldier " (the wit of 
all these legends), God's orders are repeatedly baffled and 
set at naught by the cunning of the soldier, who stands be- 
fore men defending them from death as long as he can. 

Most of these legends are, however, devoted to the ad- 
ventures and exploits of the minor lights of the popular 
heaven — the saints. It must be confessed that they are 
represented as a rather queer set. They quarrel among 
themselves, brag about their strength and achievements, 
sometimes cheat one another, and when they want to play 
some trick scruple not to tell deliberate falsehoods. 

In the legend entitled " St. Elias and St. Nicolas" we are 
told the story of a moujik who was very devout towards St. 
Nicolas, but paid no attention whatever to St. Elias. 

One day the two saints passed by his fields, which were 
all green with sprouting vegetation. 

" What a rich harvest the man will gather !" exclaimed 
St. Nicolas ; " and it is only fair that he should, for he is 
a good moujik, fearing God and respecting the saints. 
Wealth is coming to the right person." 

" Oh, well," answered St. Elias, " that still remains to be 
seen ;" and the wrathful saint then announced his intention 
of sending hail and storm on the field. 

On learning this, St. Nicolas ran to the moujik and ad- 
vised him to immediately sell his growing crops to the pop 
of St. Elias's chapel. 



POPULAR RELIGION. 225 

Some weeks later the two saints were once more passing 
the same way. 

"Look," said St. Elias, "how well I have belabored the 
moujik's fields. There is hardly one sheaf left." 

" Quite true," answered St. Nicolas, " only you have de- 
stroyed the crops belonging to the pop of your own chapel, 
and not those of the moujik, because he sold thera to him 
a few weeks aq-o." 

"Never mind," said Elias, "I will reward ray pop, and 
will make his fields twice as good as before." 

St. Nicolas ran to the moujik once more, and advised 
him to buy his crops back again, which the moujik did 
with great advantage to himself. 

So the naive story goes on — St. Elias inveighing, threat- 
ening, striking ; St. Nicolas forewarning his friend the mou- 
jik in time, and suggesting various tricks by which he might 
turn the intended punishment to his own advantage. 

" Oh, brother Nicolas," St. Elias at last exclaimed, on see- 
ing all his efforts frustrated, " I guess that you have report- 
ed all I told you to the moujik." 

" Nonsense !" exclaimed St. Nicolas ; " how can you 
charge me with such a thing?" 

" Oh, well ! you may say what you like — I am sure it is 
all your doing. But you may rely upon it, the moujik 
shall hear of me yet." 

"But what will you do to him?" 

" That is my business, which I will not confide to you."" 

St. Nicolas hastened to the moujik, and ordered him to 
buy two candles, one as thick as his wrist and worth a ruble, 
the second as thin as a straw and only worth one copeck, 
and to be on the road at such and such a time and place. 

" Where are you going?" asked the two saints, who met 
him. 

" To the church, to put this thick candle before St. Elias, 
my benefactor, who has been so generous to me." 
15 



226 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

" And this thin one V 

" This thin one will do for St. Nicolas," said the moujik, 
and went his way. 

"What do you say to that, Elias?'' said St. Nicolas. 
"You accused me of having reported all you said to the 
moujik. I hope you yourself now see that I did nothing 
of the kind." 

In the legend called " The Marvellous Thrashing of Corn " 
St. John the kind-hearted is described in a fashion which 
savors rather of the disrespectful. Once he was wandering 
with other apostles on the earth, when night overtook them 
in an open field. It was winter-time, and the frost was 
bitter. It seemed hard to the saints to spend the night 
unsheltered. They accordingly knocked at the door of a 
moujik, who on seeing so large a company at first refused 
them admittance. He relented, however, when the wander- 
ers promised to help him in the morning with his thrash- 
ing. When early in the morning the moujik called them, 
the apostles wanted to go to work, but St. John the kind- 
hearted persuaded them to sleep a while longer. When, 
after a time, the moujik came once more to summon them, 
and saw they were still sleeping, he took a whip and ad- 
ministered a good flogging to the nearest sleeper, who hap- 
pened to be St. John the kind-hearted. 

" Stop 1" cried St. John the kind-hearted, " we will follow 
you at once to the court-yard." 

The moujik believed him and went away. But as soon 
as the door closed behind him, St. John the kind-hearted 
exclaimed, 

"Bah! He has treated us roughly, and yet expects us 
to work for him. Let us sleep a while longer." 

The apostles, who had proposed to descend, allowed 
themselves to be overpersuaded, and resumed their rest, 
St. John the kind-hearted having slyly taken the precaution 
of changing his place. 



POPULAR RELIGION. 227 

" When the monjik comes he will again apply his whip 
to the nearest sleeper," thought the saint, and accordingly 
stretched himself out at the opposite end of the room. 

The moujik came again, whip in hand, but said he to 
himself, "Why should I always beat the same man?" and 
he applied his whip this time to the sleeper who lay the 
farthest from the door. Thus did St. John the kind-hearted 
have to bear the next thrash in o- too. 

The same promise given on the part of the belabored 
saint, the same scene after their host had left them, fol- 
lowed by the same result for the unlucky saint, who had 
this time put himself in the middle. 

After his third thrashing St. John the kind-hearted found 
that it was more troublesome to sleep than to work, and 
urged his companions to descend in hot haste. 

That which is here worthy our attention is not, of course, 
the disaojreement between all these lesrends and the canon 
of Scripture and the catechism, but their general tone. 

Our dissenters also have their religious poetry, " verses," 
or hymns, which are often at variance, not merely with the 
Bible but with good-sense as well. Here is one illustration, 
the hymn about "Halleluiah's Wife." It tells how Mrs. 
Halleluiah (sic), her baby-child in her arms, stood before a 
blazing fire in her room, when Jesus entered. He told her 
that he was flying for life from the Jews, who were pursu- 
ing him closely, and bade her save him. Halleluiah's wife, 
on hearing Jesus' summons, tore her baby-child from her 
breast and threw it into the blazing fire, and took Jesus to 
her breast in its stead. 

When the Jews broke into the room and demanded to 
know where Jesus was, Halleluiah's wife pointed to her 
baby burning in the fire, and said it was he. The Jews 
went away without having recognized Jesus, who was in 
her arms. 



228 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

This song is perfectly apocryphal. The incident about 
baby Jesus coming by himself and speaking is strange ; and 
the conversion of the word Halleluiah into a living person 
having a wife and a child is quite absurd; but the whole 
of this terrible song breathes the wild poetry of religious 
exaltation. It expresses in a powerful though somewhat 
clumsy form an intense feeling of devotion and readiness 
for self-sacrifice for the sake of God. The funny, flippant 
stories of the orthodox peasants, however, whether canoni- 
cal or not matters not, of which some samples are given, 
savor rather of amusement at the expense of orthodoxy 
than of expressions of earnest religious sentiment. 



CHAPTER III. 

There is another test which may be applied to prove 
the intensity of the religious feelings of a community, more 
tangible, and therefore perhaps more convincing, than the 
former. This is the position held by the clergy. A strong, 
earnest religion means an influential and a respected clergy, 
and vice versa. A general contempt for the clergy is in- 
compatible with great zeal for the religion which they 
profess. Religion is not like a positive science, where the 
personal feeling inspired by the exponent has nothing what- 
ever to do with the acceptance or rejection of his doctrine. 

Now, there cannot be and there is no divided opinion as 
to how matters stand between the Russian people and their 
clergy. To put it in the most charitable way possible, the 
pops are not respected by the moujiks. The orthodox 
clergy, as a body, have no moral influence over the masses, 
and enjoy no confidence among them. The extreme con- 
servatives agree with the socialists as to this fact, though 
the latter consider it to be a great boon, constituting one 
of the few compensations for our unfortunate historical 
past ; while the former very justly see in it one of the 
heavy odds against them, and vainly seek to find a remedy 
for a malady past all cure. 

The relations between the moujiks and their pops have 
little, if anything, of the spiritual in them. Let us charita- 
bly admit as many individual exceptions as can be wished, 
it yet remains an undeniable fact that as a rule the pops are 
looked upon by their parishioners not as guides or advisers, 
but as a class of tradesmen, who have wholesale and retail 



230 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

dealings in sacraments. In Russia it is only the superior, 
or black, clergy (the monks) who are endowed with riches, 
and who receive stipends sufficient to maintain them in ease 
and opulence. For the white, or inferior, clergy, the married 
curates, there is fortunately no State endowment. In the 
rural districts they possess, it is true, some freehold land for 
farming purposes, but their chief source of revenue is the 
fees they receive for ministering at baptisms, burials, wed- 
dings, special masses, and private services such as every 
peasant's family desires to have performed on some occa- 
sions in their own homes. 

The principle on which this arrangement is based is fair 
and equitable enough, since thereby the expenses for the 
maintenance of the clergy are distributed among those who 
desire their ministrations. Unfortunately, the exceeding 
poverty of the peasants on the one hand, and on the other 
the exceeding greediness of the pops, who rarely care for 
anything beyond their own profits, make it a source of most 
shameless abuse and heartless extortions. The pops, as a 
matter of course, haggle over every penny in the price of 
their peculiar merchandise, and as they hold, moreover, a 
monopoly, can drive any of their spiritual sheep to the 
wall. 

The wedding, or the christening, or the burial cannot be 
put off indefinitely, nor can it be performed by another 
clergyman except by the special license of the parson of the 
village. If the moujik is too poor, or the sum demanded 
too high, the pop does not scruple to flatly refuse to admin- 
ister the sacrament. Many cases have been reported by the 
newspapers of pops having refused to bury the dead because 
they had not been able to come to terms with the relatives 
— this certainly being the extreme point to which churlish- 
ness can attain. We hear the same story from every quar- 
ter, but will not waste space here on illustrations, of which 
it would be only too easy to find enough to cover many 



POPULAR RELIGION. 231 

pages — nay, even to fill chapters* Oar churclies are not 
houses of prayer, but houses of plunder, as the dissenters 
say ; and this is the chief cause of the deep-seated estrange- 
ment between the people and the orthodox clergy. 

The exceeding sensitiveness of the consciences of believ- 
ers to the practical conduct of their religious teachers is 
an accepted fact. Whenever there has been the slightest 
awakening of the religious sentiment in the masses, it has 
been the un worthiness of the vessel which has been first 
felt; the turbidness of the contents was not discovered, or 
even looked for, till afterwards. Theological subtleties are 
beyond the comprehension of the uneducated, while, on the 
other hand, the moral inconsistencies and shocking practices 
of the men who represent the Church wound the eyes of 
all, and cause their hearts to rise in indignation, wrath, and 
disgust, with the result that thousands turn a willing ear to 
the apostles of some new creed. 

Dissatisfaction on the part of the people with the clergy 
has played a very important part in stimulating, and partic- 
ularly in widening, all great religious movements ; and that 
in Russia is no exception to this common rule. Diatribes 
against the corruption of the orthodox clergy form the fa- 
vorite themes of the dissenting prophets of our day. They 
are as virulent and effective as was the outcry raised by the 
leaders of the Reformation against the great parent Church. 
A closer study of the inner development and the propaga- 
tion of Russian dissenting sects only proves that, their reli- 
gious aspirations having once been awakened, the Russians 
can no more put up with the scandalous venality and extor- 
tions of our pops than could the Germans with the traffic in 
indulgences and other similar practices. But this fact only 
serves to throw into stronger relief the strange equanimity 
of the orthodox. They are as fully awake to the short- 
comings of their pops, and despise and ridicule them almost 
as willingly, as do the dissenters themselves. Yet they seem 



232 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

to be quite satisfied with what they have, and make no effort 
to get anything better. 

What can it all mean ? Why do the peasants care about 
such pops and their ministrations at all? And if they do 
not value them, why do they pay them, poverty-stricken as 
they themselves are ? The heavy expenses incurred by the 
great bulk of the population for the satisfaction of their 
religious needs sufBce alone to exclude any idea of levity. 
When we see a moujik bargaining eagerly with a pop for a 
religious ceremony which he wishes performed, or a prayer 
which he wishes to have recited, and then go away in de- 
spair, and return an hour later and reiterate every means of 
persuasion, entreaty, coaxing, and upbraiding to obtain an 
abatement of a few copecks in the price demanded, and 
finally, when brought to bay, disbursing the money, with 
bitter complaints against the pop's covetousness, we cannot 
suppose that his feelings towards his spiritual father can 
still be very friendly or reverential. But at the same time 
we cannot help coming to the conclusion that there must 
be something in the pop's ministrations for which the mou- 
jik must care very earnestly indeed ; he must put his faith 
in the outward form, if not in the inner virtue of the prayer 
or the ceremony — in the rite, if not in the religion. 

If we wish to find the cue to the strange state of our 
people's religious feelings, we must bear in mind the leaven 
of heathenism which up to the present day has permeated 
the rudimentary Christianity of our rural population. Time 
in its progress has so far influenced them in matters of re- 
ligion as to cause them to drop the formal worship of Baal, 
but with the bulk of the people orthodoxy means little be- 
yond a purely heathenish ritualism. An orthodox moujik 
believes in the virtue of the pop's ceremonies and recitals 
in pretty much the same sense as he believes in the efficacy 
of the perfectly incoherent and incomprehensible conjura- 
tions of the exorcists. Provided the pop be the right pop, 



POPULAR RELIGION. 233 

and the words be utters be spoken in tbe right way and in 
the right place, they will have their due effect, whatever be 
the attitude of mind of the speaker or his personal charac- 
ter, or whether he does it for love or for money. 

This standard of religion does not necessarily exclude a 
certain zeal in the observance of its claims, and in the ful- 
filment of religious duties. A pilgrim who trudges his 
weary way for thousands of miles to kiss the shrine of some 
saint; a mother who allows her sick child to dwindle away 
for lack of substantial food rather than break the rigorous 
Lenten fast by giving it a sip of milk; a penitent on his 
knees "hammering off" his thousandth bow on the stony 
floor of the church — all exhibit that kind of piety which is 
very common among the Russians. 

It springs as much from primitive heathenism as from 
the higher forms of monotheism. Religious feeling is, with 
them, so to speak, crumbled up into a number of disjointed 
fragments. Of the powerful integration which transforms 
it into an all-absorbing passion that carries all before it the 
bulk of the orthodox peasantry knows nothing now, and 
never has known anything. 

This does not mean that the Russian peasants are by 
nature inclined to religious indifference. They have their 
full share of the human faculty for intense enthusiasm, 
which, in dealing with masses, is most readily converted 
into religious zeal. The history of our sects, old and new, 
is there to prove it. 

All we wish to point out is that with the orthodox Rus- 
sian peasantry, which up to the present day has formed 
three-quarters of our rural population, religious feeling is 
almost entirely dormant. Fortunately for us, Byzantine 
orthodoxy was unable to call forth, or to permanently hold, 
more than a quite insignificant quantity of this emotional 
force, a quantity so small that we may ignore it. 

It has lain there, hidden in the breasts of the toiling mill- 



234 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

ions, as an enormous potential force, whicb, however, may 
be awakened some day, and appear as a new and important 
agent of our national history. We, for our part, venture to 
express the opinion that here, in the presence of this latent 
force, which has never yet been tested, lies perhaps the 
greatest enigma of Russia's future. 

It is not at all improbable that Russia may never have a 
great religious movement of her own, like those which stand 
between the Middle Ages and the new centuries in Europe. 
The positive sciences have clipped the wings of the super- 
natural throughout the civilized world, and there is perhaps 
no country where the whole of the educated classes are so 
thoroughly imbued with the spirit of free thought as are 
the Russians. Now it is quite impossible that this fact 
should have no influence over the popular mind. The in- 
tellectual barriers between the upper and lower classes are 
rapidly disappearing. Nowadays the most gifted among 
the peasants — the future leaders of the masses — can grope 
their way towards light and knowledge. Contact with 
modern civilization must needs blunt the edge and destroy 
the freshness of the faith which can work miracles and 
move mountains only when in its full bloom. 

Russia may skip over this phase of social development, 
for which she has come too late ; she may gradually enter 
into that period wherein those precious and sublime facul- 
ties of man's soul, love and self-denial, will be spent directly 
on works of love and truth, ennobling and exalting human 
life instead of being stored up and petrified in the region 
of ethereal skies. 

On the other hand, we see that our peasantry, in its in- 
tellectual awakening, shows a remarkable tendency to run 
into religious channels. Dumb and inert in the domain of 
politics, it is in the founding of religious sects that our 
peasantry has formulated its most cherished ideals and social 
aspirations. Here they exhibit not only great intellectual 



POPULAR RELIGION. 235 

activity but also unlimited moral energy. With a wider 
and more energetic awakening of the popular intelligence, 
either before, or during, or even the day after our political 
crisis, the fervent genius of religion, stifled heretofore un- 
der the blankets of orthodox ritualism, may awaken like- 
wise. 

No great national movement is possible unless the aspira- 
tions of the masses are shared by the educated classes. Yet 
even when confined to the masses religion is capable of 
developing into issues of the greatest magnitude. 

One thing is however certain : whether extensive or lim- 
ited, primary or unimportant, the religious element, when 
it eventually steps to the front, will not do so under the 
auspices of orthodoxy. 

The history of the awakening of the religious sentiment 
in various sections of the Russian people is, from this point 
of view, very instructive. 



THE PiASCOL. 



CHAPTER I. 

In the year 1659 Patriarch Nicon, then the head of the 

Russian Church, issued a new edition of the raass-book, or 
missal, revised and carefully corrected according to the old 
Slavonic and Greek originals. This was not the first oc- 
casion on which the Muscovite czars and patriarchs had 
busied themselves with proof-reading. When the printing- 
press was introduced into Muscovy, and the publication of 
the sacred books was resolved upon, the Muscovite people 
discovered, to their great mortification, that the manuscript 
copies used in various dioceses presented many discrepan- 
cies, and sometimes even complete distortions of the orig- 
inal text. These errors were corrected as far as it lav in 
the power of the ignorant pops appointed to superintend 
the printing business to correct them. 

During the patriarchate of Joseph, the predecessor of 
Nicon, a special commission was nominated for a new re- 
vision of the sacred books. Some of the eloquent and influ- 
ential leaders in the future schism formed part of this com- 
mission — Protopop, Avvakum, Xeronoff, Login, and others. 
The result of their labor was a text which is said by connois- 
seurs to be a fine example of idiomatic Slavonian, though 
still but a poor performance as far as correctness went. 

Patriarch Nicon and Czar Alexis resolved to crown the 
edifice, and bestow upon the Muscovite people a text and a 



THE RASCOL. 23? 

ritual to which no exceptions could be taken. They pro- 
ceeded with all the care and circumspection the importance 
of the work required. Learned scholars, both Russian and 
foreign, were summoned to Moscow ; the best and oldest 
manuscripts were procured from the libraries of Mount 
Athos and other Oriental monasteries and churches. The 
patriarch superintended the work, and the Czar, who took 
the liveliest interest in it, warmly assisted him. No pains 
were spared to make the work good and authoritative. The 
revisers proved themselves thoroughly competent, and pro- 
duced a text which modern Russian philologists pronounce 
to be perfectly reliable. 

The chief corrections introduced into the text of the va- 
rious scriptural books, gradually issued by the ecclesiastical 
authorities, need not detain us here. Of religion the Rus- 
sians of Nicon's time knew nothing beyond that which they 
heard or saw in the churches, to which they trooped on 
great occasions. The schism was provoked by the changes 
introduced by Nicon in the mass-book. Let us now exam- 
ine in what they consisted. 

The most important innovation, which afterwards became 
the symbol and the war-cry of the religious rebellion, re- 
ferred to the position of the fingers in making the sign of 
the cross. The Russians of Nicon's time when they crossed 
themselves held two fingers together, while the Oriental 
churches and the Greeks enjoined their adherents to cross 
themselves with three fingers united into one point. The 
two-finscered cross of the Muscovites was used in the Orient 
only for giving the priestly benediction. The ikons of the 
saints of clerical grade are usually represented in the act of 
conferring this benediction, which was doubtless the cause 
of the universal acceptance of this form of making the sign 
of the cross in Russia. 

Patriarch Nicon was anxious to return to ancient tradi- 
tions. Reserving the two-fingered cross for priestly bene- 



238 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

dictions only, he re - established the three - fingered Greek 
cross, or, as his opponents called it, " the pinch - of - snuff 
cross," for the private act of devotion. 

Then, too, in certain cases, for instance in stamping the 
round wafers, he introduced the use of the equilateral, four- 
sided cross (similar to the Swiss or Crusader's cross), as the 
Greeks were wont to do, while the Kussians of this time 
never departed from the original normal cross, modelled 
after that on which Christ was crucified — a long stem with 
shorter transverse beams. 

The Russians celebrated the mass on seven wafers, while 
the Greeks and Orientals used only five. 

In the processions of the Church the Russians were in the 
habit of first turning their steps westward — going with the 
sun ; the Greeks marched eastward — against the sun. In 
all these points Patriarch Nicon conformed to the tradi- 
tions of the 'Greek mother-church. In conformity with this 
rule, moreover, he directed that the hallelujahs should be 
" trebled," or sung thrice, as with the Greeks, the Russians 
having up till then only "doubled" it — singing, instead 
of the third hallelujah, its Russian equivalent, "God be 
praised." Finally, or we should rather say above all, Nicon 
introduced a fresh spelling of the name of Jesus. The fact 
is that, probably in consequence of the Russian habit of 
abbreviating some of the commonest scriptural names, the 
second letter in the name Jesus had been dropped altogeth- 
er; it was simply spelt Jsus, without any sign of abbrevi- 
ation. Patriarch Nicon corrected this orthographical error, 
replacing the missing letter. 

Was this all? Yes, this w^as all. As far as doctrinal 
matters were concerned, nothing more serious was at stake 
in the great religious schism of the seventeenth century, 
known by the name of RascoL 

And yet it was for these trifles — a letter less in a name, 
a finger more in a cross, the doubling instead of the treb- 



THE KASCOL. 239 

ling of a word — that thousands of people, both men and 
women, encountered death on the scaffold or at the state. 
It was for these things that other scores of thousands un- 
derwent the horrible tortures of the knout, the strappado, 
the rack, or had their bodies mutilated, their tongues cut, 
their hands chopped off. 

Saddening, sickening sight, unredeemed and unsoothed 
by that mingled feeling of respect and thankfulness which 
we bring to the shrines of the martyrs and champions in 
the great cause of humanity ! It seems impossible to dis- 
cover what human or national interest could have been 
served by the numberless victims and heroes of the Rascol 
struggles, which read more like a bloody farce than a great 
historical tragedy. 

For a long time the Rascol remained a great and unsolved 
riddle to all the investigators of our national life. It puz- 
zled by the fierce fanaticism and unlimited spirit of self- 
sacrifice which it roused for the sake of trifles so utterly 
irrelevant. It puzzled still more by the fact of its influence 
having been spread over a mass of from ten to fifteen mill- 
ions of people, and by the extraordinary tenacity of its hold. 
Scholars could only marvel that a kind of mental craze 
should thus stand the test of two centuries, constantly gain- 
ing ground over the certainly more rational views of ofiBcial 
orthodoxy. 

The honor of throwing the light of science on this 
the darkest problem of our history, and of unravelling the 
standing enigma of the Rascol, belongs to the last twenty to 
twenty-five years, and is one of the most brilliant triumphs 
of modern Russian historiography. Attracted by the mag- 
nitude of this purely popular movement, some of our best 
historians — Shchapov and Kostomarov at their head — made 
the Rascol a special object of long and patient study. They 
threaded their way through the contradictions and perplex- 
ities of that strange and complicated movement ; and they 



240 THE EUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

have sliown it to be, not an outburst of callous obscurant- 
ism and sordid reaction, but a striking illustration of the 
peculiar and crooked paths by which the human spirit 
sometimes marches from darkness into lio-ht. The common 
conclusion come to, as summed up by Kostomarov, is that, 
"far from being a reactionary movement, the Rascol was an 
important step in the intellectual progress of our people."* 

Such words sound strange when applied to a rebellion 
in favor of the absolute immutability of ancient traditions, 
andabsolute negation of the right to criticise even so much 
as the spelling of the Scriptures. But nevertheless so it 
is, and the seemingly strange views on the Rascol, advo- 
cated by the modern historical school, possess that qual- 
ity of forcible persuasiveness which is proper to all really 
scientific discoveries. 

To begin with, there is one consideration which at once 
exonerates our Rascolniks from the charge of exceptional 
narrow-mindedness. We have only to reverse our position 
and to look on the history of the Rascol from the opposite 
point of view. If it is strange that people should die for 
the sake of an orthographical blunder, is it not equally 
strange that their opponents, the dominant Church party, 
comprising all the best educated among the clergy and 
society, should burn, hang, and decapitate hundreds and 
thousands of their fellow-creatures, and ruin and devastate 
entire provinces, for questions so utterly unimportant ? 

Indiixnation at disobedience accounted for much in tlhese 
fierce persecutions. Despotism, both secular and ecclesiasti- 
cal, was provoked by the impudence of benighted moujiks 
who dared to reason for themselves on questions of faith and 
Scripture. But though this might account for a few fitful 
acts of violence, it is not sufficient to account for half a 
century's uninterrupted struggle, which strained all the 

* " Monograph," vol. viii. 



THE RASCOL. 241 

resources of the State, and which brought on the Govern- 
ment incalculable harm. It is evident that the dominant 
Church party, with the Czar and the patriarch at its head, 
considered the corrections they had made just as essential 
to the interests of true religion as did the Rascolniks the 
maintenance of the old forms. Where the two parties 
differed was as to which really were the ancient and true 
rites and forms of orthodoxy. In their conception as to 
what actually constituted true religion, both the contend- 
ing parties were agreed. They both believed in the efficacy 
of the rite as such, and therefore were both firmly con- 
vinced that the slightest inaccuracy would render it null 
and void before the face of the Lord — a standard of relig- 
ion which forcibly recalls that of the orthodox peasants 
of the present day, which we described in the previous 
chapter. 

The two forms of religion present an evident affinity. 
The study of the one is exceedingly useful towards a right 
understanding of the other. We realize the Rascol more 
vividly when we look at it through the medium of modern 
popular religion ; while, on the other hand, the study of the 
Rascol helps us to a better comprehension of the state of 
religious thought among our rural contemporaries. With 
the moujiks this curious phase of the religious idea is still 
a living thing — a fact standing there in the full bloom of 
its reality. But it is confined exclusively to the class which 
tills the soil, illiterate people for the most part, who have 
neither the leisure nor the habit of mind to fit them for 
abstract speculation. They cannot think abstract questions 
out logically, and therefore cannot give them adequate 
expression. Besides, the peasantry of to-day is no longer 
intellectually on a uniform level. Groups and individuals 
representing more advanced religious phases are to be met 
with everywhere. Small in number, they yet are likely 
to attract the attention of an outsider, and would be apt 
IG 



242 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

to confound and mislead him in making his observations. 
In the seventeenth century Muscovites of all ranks and 
classes were as uniform in their religious ideas as only an 
uncultured nation can be. The documents referring to the 
ecclesiastical history of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
turies, anterior to the great ritualistic schism, supply us 
with perfect examples of this Christianized fetichism — 
crystallized as hard as granite, unyielding and ferocious, 
like all absolute religious convictions. 

Some of our scholars, Kostomarov among them, ascribe 
this uninspiring form of Christianity to a certain superfi- 
ciality and formalism inborn in the Great Russians (Mus- 
covites). 

It is an open question whether the Great Russians really 
have this tendency or not; their social and political life 
shows a marked, nay, often an injudicious repugnance to 
any formalism whatever, while, as far as the domain of 
speculation is concerned, the Russians as a race certainly 
exhibit no peculiar proclivity for sticking to details and 
exterior forms. Then why should they be pronounced to 
be by nature narrow and formal in their religion? It is 
always safer not to fall back upon a far-fetched hypothesis 
when a thing can be accounted for as a simple stage in 
natural development. 

We must, indeed, upset all our ideas as to the natural 
and organic development of the human mind if we are to 
suppose that the wholesale conversion to Christianity of 
tribes and nations can be anything but fictitious and 
superficial. 

Barbarians, whether they were the Franks under Clovis, 
or the Saxons under Alfred, or the Russians under Vladimir 
of Kieff, after having spent one short quarter of an hour 
in the water of a river, which may have washed a little 
dirt from their bodies, could not have had their minds 
cleansed from all the ideas acquired and inherited from 



THE KASCOL. 243 

centuries. Fetich-worshippers as they were, they could 
do nothing more than clothe their national fetichism in a 
Christian garb; and this they did. The popes of Rome 
issued dozens of bulls of excommunication against the ob- 
servers of old heathen ceremonies. The chroniclers of the 
Middle Ages utter complaints against them. The same 
story was lived through in Western Europe as it had been 
in Eastern. 

These early conquests of the Cross remind us of the 
solemnity of taking possession of the main, as practised by 
the Spaniards and other Europeans in the New World, 
rather than of real conversions. Then, under the protec- 
tion of friendly standards, a stream of new ideas began 
to penetrate into the popular mind, side by side with the 
elements of general culture. So exceeding slow is the 
process that even now it is not perfected. In countries 
which can count fifteen hundred years of oflScial Christian- 
ity there remain sections of the population which still re- 
tain many of the features of primitive Christianized hea- 
thenism. 

In Western Europe, however, as w^ell as in the Ruthe- 
nian (Southern Russian) provinces, where the banner of 
Lithuania and Catholic Poland was followed, the author- 
ized spokesmen of religion stood, intellectually, far above 
the masses. The Catholic priests and monks were ac- 
quainted with Latin, and preserved in part their inheritance 
of the high philosophy and culture of antiquity. Thus, 
in Europe generally, the theological efforts of the popular 
mind were kept in check and confined to their own spheres, 
and branded wholesale with the name of " superstition," 
while in Russia they w^ere converted into " orthodox Chris- 
tianity." 

The Greek clergy, which did so much towards spreading 
Christianity over the Slavonic world, was likewise the bearer 
of the rudiments of culture. This culture very readily 



244 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

struck root among the Russians of the eleventh and twelfth 
centuries, but was swept away again by the invasion of the 
Asiatic nomads and the three centuries of desperate strug- 
gle which followed. 

By this struggle all intellectual pursuits were interrupted. 
The clergy gave up the study of Greek, which in those days 
was the vehicle of culture ; they even forgot old Slavonic, 
into which the Scriptures had been translated, and in which 
the liturgy was celebrated. To know how to read grew to 
be a rare accomplishment, which most of the rural clergy 
did not possess, and they therefore learned the liturgy from 
their predecessors by rote and from ear. Some of the cul- 
tivated bishops felt much grieved at having to consecrate 
these illiterate men, sent to them by the village communes; 
but they could find no substitutes, and had to decide be- 
tween leaving the village without a minister at all or conse- 
crating those who were unable to read one word of the 
Scriptures. 

Thus, while Western Europe steadily progressed in her 
culture, emerging about the sixteenth century from the bar- 
barity of the Middle Ages, Russia relapsed into a state of 
almost primitive savagery. Religion necessarily followed 
the same retrogressive movement. It relapsed into its prim- 
itive state, and would have been well suited to the intelli- 
gence of the converts made by St. Vladimir and bis early 
followers. With this difference, however : Christianity was 
no longer a mere garb, donned to please a popular prince, 
and to be thrown off again while heathenism was resumed 
with perfect ease of mind, a proceeding of which there have 
been several examples in our early history. 

Orthodoxy gained ground in the nation, and at last grew 
to be a part of its very flesh and bones. For six centuries 
orthodoxy was identified with the life of the nation. In 
the most solemn and tragic moments of our history — when 
struggling desperately w4th the sword and by state -craft 



THE RASCOL. 245 

against the overwhelming power of the Tartars for the 
right of calling their bodies and goods their own, or when 
defending the State and the integrity of the Empire against 
the Poles and Swedes — the Russians always had to face ene- 
mies of another creed, as well as of another nationality. 
Whenever they met on a peaceful footing with aliens, they 
found them different — save a mere handful of Greeks — in 
creed as well as in speech and race. Orthodoxy became 
confounded with the idea of nationality. 

"Russian" and '' provoslavny ^^ (orthodox) became syno- 
nyms, the latter priming the former. Up to the present 
time, orthodox peasants among whom there happens to be 
a settlement of dissenters will say, pointing out some group 
of houses or some village, " Such and such villages or fam- 
ilies are Molokane or Duhhohorzy^ and we. are Russians^'' 
i,e,j orthodox. To give up orthodoxy means to forsake the 
Russian nationality, to cease to be a Russian. Many dis- 
senters concur in this view. They call the orthodox Church 
the Russian Church, and the orthodox, Russians — as if they 
themselves did not belong to that nation. 

The old Muscovites were exceedingly sensitive to any 
wrong or disrespect shown towards orthodoxy. Whenever 
it was threatened in any way, the people rose as one man, 
and achieved miracles to preserve undefiled what was to 
them the highest embodiment of their national self-con- 
sciousness. 

Patriotism is a powerful feeling when called into action ; 
under ordinary circumstances, however, this feeling of na- 
tional self-love is a quiet sentiment, defensive rather than 
impulsive. Whatever be the national peculiarity on which 
it prides itself the most — be it religion, language, or consti- 
tution — it is roused to activity only when some danger 
threatens the thing cherished. When in the secure enjoy- 
ment of its idol it naturally keeps quiet and slumbers. The 
ancient Muscovites cleaved to all customs bequeathed to 



246 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY, 

them by their forefathers — to the habit of wearing long 
beards, for example, which they lield sacred. When Peter 
the Great ordered all beards to be shorn, this mandate pro- 
duced an indignant and lasting opposition, which culminated 
in 1707 in a regular "beard insurrection" in Astrakhan. 
Before the issue of this ukase, however, and so long as nei- 
ther razor nor scissors threatened the luxuriant growth on 
men's chins, why should the Muscovites make more fuss 
about their beards than other people did ? 

Passing from small things to great, we may say that so 
it was with religion. It was felt to be an attribute of the 
whole nation, without being in any sense an individual im- 
pulse. Hence that seemingly strange contradiction, which 
was in reality no contradiction at all — their striking readi- 
ness to stand by their religion to the last drop of their 
blood, and at the same time the no less striking religious 
indifference in their every-day life, and utter carelessness in 
the fulfilment of their religious duties — facts abundantly 
proved by the records of the epoch. 

They did not observe the rites of the Church ; many 
among both laymen and clergymen were in the habit of 
living with women unwedded; they did not attend at 
church, save at very great solemnities; the churches stood 
empty, and the clergy, who were addicted to much drinking 
and bad living, sometimes did not celebrate the mass for 
months together. Preaching was dropped altogether, ex- 
cept that the patriarch preached occasionally. The practice 
of preaching was not re-established among the inferior 
clergy until much later, in the time of Peter the Great, 
when the new-comers, the orthodox Ruthenian priests, re- 
sumed the practice. The service was conducted in a man- 
ner which well illustrated the people's indifference to it; 
two or three different songs were sung at the same time, or 
several parts of the liturgy read simultaneously, so that 
nothing could be understood. The congregation talked, 



THE RASCOL, 247 

laughed, and quarrelled during the service, and came and 
went freely, standing with their heads covered, and they 
kept neither fasts nor Sundays. 

When the great boyar, Morosov, the confidant of Czar 
Alexis, who was a great church-goer, tried to compel his 
peasants to go regularly to church, and not to work on 
Sundays, he almost provoked a rebellion. The steward of 
his estate reported to him that " the peasants were secretly 
working at their own homes on Sundays, and refused to 
give up the habit, because in the neighboring village of 
Alexeevka, and all around them, the people worked on Sun- 
days. Neither would they go to church ; on St. Peter's 
Day none of them attended at God's temple." The boyar 
made his injunctions more stringent, giving orders that 
those who remained obdurate should be fined and flogged. 
The steward reported that at the meeting convened to hear 
their master's message the peasants were quite angry with 
him, and shouted, " It is all your doing ! It is you that 
have reported against us to our master, in order to compel 
us to pray often !" And they began to assemble in large 
crowds and to look defiant, " and I fear," adds the unwilling 
propagator of piety, " they may be meditating my death." 



CHAPTER 11. 

It was a moment of severe trial to the Muscovites when 
the patriarch Nicon sent his new missal, with all its sweep- 
ing innovations, to all the churches and chapels of the Em- 
pire. Traditional ritualism and the no less traditional in- 
differentism came into collision with each other, and had 
to show which would prove the stronger of the two. Had 
the proposed reforms emanated from the outside, or had 
there been any ground for the suspicion that it had been 
borrowed from or suggested by foreigners, one-tenth of the 
changes introduced would have sufficed to make the whole 
country rise in wrath and indignation, and eject both the 
patriarch and his mass-book. Nicon's enemies knew this, 
and exerted themselves strenuously to prove that his " nov- 
elties" were pure Romish popery. But this trick would 
not hold water. 

There was no ground for suspecting the slightest treason 
to the national cause in a measure started under the auspices 
of a Czar like Alexis, and a patriarch like Nicon. Czar 
Alexis Mikhailovitch was a model Czar, to whom no excep- 
tion could be taken,* though Patriarch Nicon had many 
enemies among the clergy, partly owing to his great severi- 
ty in exposing their evil conduct, and partly owing to his 
personal arrogance and cruelty. The bulk of the popula- 
tion, however, neither knew nor cared about these family 
quarrels. 



* The intense popular sufferings which gave rise to so many re- 
bellions during this reign were always attributed to the wickedness 
of the Czar's officials. 



THE EASCOL. 249 

Nicon was by far the strongest and cleverest man who 
had occupied the ecclesiastical throne of the Moscow patri- 
archate since its first creation. There was much to admire 
in his manly character, notwithstanding his obvious short- 
comings, and he was vastly popular with the great mass of 
laymen. 

It must have seemed preposterous to suppose that such a 
man could become a traitor to the national cause, and a con- 
vert to popery or any other foreign heresy. This patriotic 
feeling, so powerfully represented in Muscovite orthodoxy, 
and constituting its impulsive element, gave no response to 
the call; while religious feeling as such — i.e., the attach- 
ment of the individual to orthodoxy as an element of spir- 
itual life — was at this period so feeble within the masses as 
to be hardly perceptible at all. If powerful religious emo- 
tions were to be called forth from the innermost recesses of 
men's hearts, some more potent spell would be needed than 
the contemplation of the eight-pointed cross, or t!ian listen- 
ing to a nasal " double " hallelujah. 

The first apostles of this religious schism had to cry in a 
veritable wilderness, confronted with an absolute indiffer- 
ence on the part of all who surrounded them. 

At a distance of two centuries we have considerable diflS- 
culty in preserving the historical perspective. Events which 
happened at short but perfectly noticeable intervals of time, 
when viewed at close quarters, seem, when viewed from a 
distance, to cover one another like the visible objects on the 
verge of the horizon. 

The Rascol is usually represented as a stormy and wide- 
spread outburst of popular discontent at the sight of Nico- 
nian " innovations." It was not so in reality. To be con- 
vinced of this we have only to pay some attention to the 
dates, which in historical investigations are as important as 
in a court of justice. The fact is that the Niconian mass- 
book, with all its bold "innovations," was at first universally 



250 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

accepted. It was certainly exceedingly distasteful to almost 
the whole body of church-goers, but they did not move a 
finger to protest against it, and quietly submitted to orders 
coming from Moscow, as was their wont. 

At the Moscow Council of 1654, convened to hear the 
new mass-book and to give it the official sanction of the 
Church, only two members dared to openly express their 
disapprobation. These two were the pop Avvacum and 
Paul of Kolomna. Outside the Council a handful of pops 
and monks joined them ; the laymen kept entirely out of 
the way. During the first twelve years after the promul- 
gation of the new missal — that is, up to the Council of 
1666-67 — the opposition to Nicon's reforms was solely rep- 
resented by a small body of monks and pops, with a very 
feeble following among the laymen. 

The Council of 1666-67 pushed the unsophisticated and 
simple-minded orthodox literally to the wall. At this sol- 
emn assembly, presided over by two Eastern patriarchs — 
those of Alexandria and of Antioch — the advocates of two- 
fingered crossing, double hallelujahs, and old uncorrected 
missals were excommunicated and anathematized in a body 
— " Their souls, in virtue of the power given to the Church 
by Jesus Christ, to be given up to eternal torments, togeth- 
er with the souls of the traitor Judas, and of the Jews by 
whom Jesus Christ was crucified." 

This was rather too strong even for those days of petty 
formalism. The famous Council, in the excess of its zeal, 
had overstepped the mark, and had done the utmost that 
could be done in the domain of spiritual influence to trou- 
ble the consciences of the faithful, and to disseminate doubts 
about official orthodoxy, thus pushing the people into the 
Rascol. 

All the generations of the past, all the saints, the holy 
patriarchs, and the early Czars, had used the same books 
and the same rites as were now condemned as heretical. 



THE RASCOL. 251 

The deduction from this was obvious, and must have struck 
even the unsophisticated intellects of the people: if those 
who stuck to the unrevised missals were doomed to eternal 
damnation now, why, then the same fate must have befallen 
their forebears likewise. The Eascolniks repeatedly point- 
ed out to their opponents and persecutors the following 
simple consideration, which must have suggested itself to 
everybody. " If you anathematize us,'^ they said, " you 
likewise anathematize your own forefathers and all the 
holy men of the past." 

The number of those who were able to think for them- 
selves was exceedingly small. To the bulk of the clergy 
and of the people it was a question of reliance on some 
authority. Now, in the choice between the whole of the 
past, with all its holiness, and the few clerks of the present, 
who quarrelled among themselves and deposed and cursed 
one another, no hesitation could be possible. Placed be- 
tween the horns of this dilemma, a common man who took 
a lively interest in religious questions could not help becom- 
ing a sympathizer and abetter of the Rascol. If he was 
endowed with a religious temperament he had the stuff in 
him of which its apostles and martyrs were made. Yet the 
Rascol was as slow to spread as lire over wood soaked in 
water, for there were so few in Russia who cared to think 
about religion at all. The rebels of the Solovezk monastery 
— a body of three hundred clerks and two hundred laymen 
— represented the main strength of the Rascol during the 
first quarter of a century after it had been olBcially pro- 
claimed by the Niconians. 

In 1682-84, sixteen years after the meeting of the Coun- 
cil which rent the Church in twain, and about twenty-five 
years after the promulgation of the new mass-book, Mos- 
cow became the centre of great public troubles, which pre- 
sent to us the rare opportunity of gaining an insight into 
the genuine feelings and dispositions of the usually dumb 



252 THE KUSSIAN PEASAXTEY. 

populace. During the first tumultuous rising of the Strel- 
zy^ which occurred in 1682, the Rascolniks were nowhere. 
Among the many grievances which the Strelzy laid before 
the regents not a word was uttered as to religious perse- 
cution. It was very evident that the Rascolniks were at 
that time too thinly disseminated among the bulk of the 
people to be represented at all in a spontaneous movement 
composed of elements taken at random from among the 
population of the capital. They were active people, these 
early Rascolniks, keenly alive to the interests of their creed, 
and able to make all winds fill their sails. Profiting by a 
temporary lull in the persecutions directed against them, 
they began an active agitation among the Strelzy and the 
people of Moscow, and got up a petition and huge riotous 
demonstrations in their favor. But they made few con- 
verts. People who consented to back their cause were not 
in the least in sympathy with their creed. The Strelzy re- 
fused to sign the Rascolniks' profession of faith. " Still," 
they said, " we will not permit the authorities to burn and 
torture people for adherence to the old creed," and all 
joined in the demonstration. They pitied the men, remain- 
ing the while quite indifEerent to the question of old or 
new creed. 

The whole enterprise collapsed ; the crowd succeeded in 
obtaining a stormy and uproarious debate on religion, which 
resulted in nothing but mutual recrimination. Czarevna 
Sophia had no diflBculty in destroying the temporary alli- 
ance between the Rascolniks and the Strelzy. " Are you 
not ashamed," she said to the deputies of the Strelzy at a 
confidential meeting, " to desert us, the Czar's children, for 
the sake of half a dozen monks ?" And the Strelzy felt 
ashamed, and gave the following characteristic answer: 
" We have nothing to do with the defence of the old faith, 
most gracious Czarevna. That is the patriarch's business, 
not ours." They were faithful representatives of the spirit 



THE RASCOL. 253 

of their comrades, who also consider religion to be " the 
business of the patriarchs." The following day the more 
prominent among the Rascolniks were arrested, their leaders 
executed, and nobody moved. The Rascolniks were not a 
force even in Moscow. They knew this, and showed their 
discernment in the great moderation of the demands they 
formulated. All they asked for was a little toleration. 
There was not as yet, in the Rascol as a body, any spirit of 
wild fanaticism and implacable hatred towards the domi- 
nant creed. They humbly petitioned that people should 
be suffered to save their souls with the aid of the same 
books and rites their forefathers and all the holy patriarchs 
and Czars of the past had used before them. Had these 
demands been conceded, even at this late hour, the growth 
of the Rascol would have been checked, and the spirit of 
religious rebellion would gradually have softened and melt- 
ed away, swamped by the flood of general indifference. 

But neither the jealous, narrow-minded clergy of the 
orthodox Church nor the Government were prepared to 
grant toleration. The Moscow riots well over, and the au- 
thority of the State re-established, Czarevna Sophia initi- 
ated a persecution against the rebels to the Church and 
to her authority which may be compared to those of the 
pagan emperors against the early Christians. 

All the officers of the Administration and of the police 
had orders, under pain of heavy punishment, to proceed to 
the discovery and extermination of the Rascol. As soon, 
therefore, as these officials heard that in their respective dis- 
tricts there ^ere people who did not attend mass, or who 
declined to admit the pops into their houses, or who ab- 
sented themselves in any sense from the sacraments of the 
orthodox Church, they apprehended them, put them to the 
torture, and questioned them as to who had converted them 
to the Rascol, and as to who were their corelio:ionists. All 
those whose names were mentioned during these investi- 



254 THE KUSSIAN PEAS ANTE Y. 

gations bad to be put to tbe torture. in tbeir turn, and so 
fortb. Tbose Rascolniks wbo proved obstinate and im- 
penitent were burned alive. Tbose wbo recanted were 
knouted and set free; but if tbey relapsed into beresy a 
second time no mercy raigbt be sbown tbem, and tbey 
were burned, even tbongb tbey recanted a second time. 

Tbe extreme section of tbe Rascol — tbe so-called "Re- 
baptists," wbo proclaimed tbe inefficiency of tbe baptism 
administered by tbe ortbodox — were placed in tbe same 
category as tbe recidivists; tbey were consigned to tbe 
stake even if tbey repented. Tbe avowedly ortbodox, wbo 
sbowed little zeal in tbe cause of tbe Cburcb, and did not 
apprebend tbe Rascolniks witbin tbeir reacli and deliver 
tbem up to tbe autborities, were knouted and fined accord- 
ing to tbe extent of tbeir carelessness ; wbile tbose wbo bad 
Rascolniks lodging under tbeir roofs, even tbougb unaware 
of tbe fact, were punisbed witb fines. If a relative or a 
friend of an imprisoned Rascolnik brougbt bim nourisb- 
ment or inquired after bim, be was arrested and knouted. 

Tbis was a war of extermination, and in it tbe Rascolniks 
were pusbed to tbe wall, and bad to cboose between tbe sac- 
rifice of tbeir faitb and tbe sacrifice of tbeir lives. Tbou- 
sands perisbed ; otbers fled in all directions, seeking refuge 
for tbemselves and tbeir creed in tbe wildest and most 
deserted parts of tbe country, on tbe extreme verge of tbe 
Empire, or in tbe vast tracts of unbabited land in tbe interior. 
Some crossed tbe Ural Mountains and settled in Siberia; 
otbers found new bomes among foreigners, and establisbed 
colonies in Sweden, in Poland, and in tbe Caucasus. Tbe 
inclement nortb, tbe sbores of tbe Frozen Ocean, and tbe 
region of tbe great seas of tbe nortb-west — wbicb now form 
tbe provinces of Arcbangelsk, Vologda, and Olonezk — were 
tbe places to wbicb converged tbe main stream of Rascolnik 
colonization. 

In tbese vast wildernesses, covered witb impenetrable for- 



THE EASCOL. 255 

ests, infested with wild animals, and cut up by deep seas, 
rivers, and marshes, the Eascolniks were better protected 
than anywhere else. But even here their persecutors did 
not leave them in peace. 

The Goverment started a regular chase after them, and in 
1687 issued a special ukase, commanding the authorities of 
all the northern regions " to look to it carefully that the 
Eascolniks did not dwell in the woods, and that whenever 
they were heard of, a body of armed men should be de- 
spatched in pursuit, so that their refuges might be discov- 
ered and destroyed and their property confiscated, and every 
man, woman, and child apprehended, in order that their 
abominable heresy might be exterminated without any 
chance of revival." 

In 1689 this order was repeated in terms more stringent 
still, under the penalty of death for negligence. 

Special officers were appointed for superintending the 
hunt after Eascolniks. 

In 1693 there was issued another ukase to the same effect, 
with an amendment with respect to their buildings and 
property; everything was to be burned to the ground, "in 
order that their companions should nowhere find any ref- 

This Draconian policy towards the Eascolniks was per- 
sisted in for more than thirty years without relaxation. 
Hunted down from one part of the country to another, the 
Eascolniks were scattered far and wide through the land, 
and spread the seeds of their creed. 

The torpor of the people was broken. The impudent ap- 
peal to brute force in matters of such delicacy, and so dear 
to men's souls, began to produce its wonted effect. The 
masses began to stir; the unprecedented persecution of 
men and women of unquestioned morality, who met their 
trials with such fortitude, began to tell even on the wooden 
nerves of their contemporaries. The two fingers — the em- 



256 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

blem of the Rascolnik's cross and creed — sliovvn to the awe- 
struck crowd from amid the flames of the stake, produced 
a stronger effect than the preaching or arguing of any num- 
ber of Rascohiiks could have done. Thus was the scarcely 
perceptible spark of earnest religious exaltation in old Mus- 
covy in fifty years fanned into a huge conflagration. 

N. Kostomarov has preserved from among the judicial 
documents of the epoch a graphic account of a case in the 
reading of which we seem to be able to put our finger on the 
very root of the question, and to realize at once how and 
why the Rascol became so contagious. 

" It was in Tumen, a town in Western Siberia ; time, Sun- 
day morning. The pops were celebrating the mass in the 
cathedral on the lines of the new missals, as usual. The 
congregation was listening calmly to the service, when, at 
the moment of the solemn appearance of the consecrated 
wafer, a female voice shouted, * Orthodox ! do not bow ! 
They carry a dead body ; the wafer is stamped with the un- 
holy cross, the seal of Antichrist.' 

^' The speaker was a female Rascolnik, accompanied by a 
male coreligionist of hers, who thus interrupted the serv- 
ice. The man and woman were seized, knouted in the pub- 
lic square, and thrown into prison. But their act produced 
its effect. When another Rascolnik, the monk Danilo, 
shortly after appeared on the same spot and began to preach, 
an excited crowd at once gathered around him. His words 
affected his audience so deeply that girls and old women 
began to see the skies open above them, and the Virgin 
Mary, with the angels, holding a crown of glory over those 
who refused to pray as they were ordered by the authori- 
ties. Danilo persuaded them to flee into the wilderness for 
the sake of the true faith. Three hundred people, both 
men and women, joined him, but a strong body of armed 
men was sent in pursuit. They could not escape, and Da- 
nilo seized the moment to preach to them, and persuade 



THE RASCOL. 257 

them that the hour had come for all of them to receive * the 
baptism of fire.' By this he meant they were to burn them- 
selves alive. They accordingly locked themselves up in a 
big wooden shed, set fire to it, and perished in the flames — 
all the three hundred, with their leader." 

This awful instance of self-immolation was not unique. 

Every Rascolnik who fell into the hands of the orthodox 
was doomed to the stake unless he abjured his faith. The 
majority, who were " Re-baptizers," had not even this base 
means of escape. It was better and nobler to die at once 
for the glory of the faith than to fall a prey to their ene- 
mies, and to die in passing through the long ordeal of fright- 
ful tortures. Religious ideas were blended together with the 
impulses of manly courage. Death at the stake was the 
baptism by fire which Christ bestowed on his faithful ; it 
was the prophet's chariot of fire, which was to carry their 
souls straight to heaven. Overflowing religious exaltation 
created a yearning after martyrdom. This is unmistakably 
shown by some of the more terrible self-inflicted auto- 
da-fe. 

On the Sea of Ladoga, on a small island, there stands an 
orthodox monastery, which bears the name of Paleostrov- 
sky. The place was particularly hateful to the surrounding 
Rascolniks, because the monks who dwelt there, and who 
knew the locality thoroughly, always guided the invading 
parties to the Rascolnik settlements. In 1688, when the 
persecutions were at their height, and a party of the most 
fierce champions of the orthodox faith was devastating the 
Rascolnik settlements in the Onega district, a Rascolnik 
monk, Ignatius of Solovezk by name, conceived the idea of 
achieving a great holocaust for the glory of the true faith. 
At the head of a great crowd, armed with bludgeons and 
axes, he passed the frozen lake, drew off the Paleostrovsky 
monks, put Ensign Gleboff and his soldiers to precipitate 
flight, and took possession of the monastery. 
17 



258 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

For several months the Rascolniks stood their ground. 
The troops, a battalion of infantry and guns, did not arrive 
from Novgorod, the headquarters of that region, until Lent. 
When the soldiers marched to the assault the Rascolniks 
locked themselves up in the big wooden church, which they 
had previously filled with a great quantity of bituminous 
matter and very combustible wood. The windows, too, 
were carefully closed with thick boards, so that when the 
troops broke into the monastery and began to pick holes in 
the walls of their refuge, the Rascolniks set fire to it and 
burned themselves to death. In all, they numbered 2700. 
The number has probably been magnified by Rascolnik his- 
torians. The orthodox authorities reduce the figures for 
this first Paleostrovsky " locking up " to 1500. 

The monastery was rebuilt, and the orthodox monks rein- 
stalled in it; but a few years later the Rascolniks were once 
more seized with the wild desire to repeat the same act of 
faith in this stronghold of the Niconians. In this second 
" locking up " the besieged Rascolniks challenged the Nico- 
nians to sham debates on religious questions, and used va- 
rious other devices in order to gain time, and to receive 
into their midst those of the inhabitants of the surrounding 
villages Avho were also anxious " to win the martyr's dia- 
dem,'' but for some reason or other could not arrive in time 
for the " locking up." It is reported that the few whom the 
soldiers pulled out of the flames with boat-hooks showed 
themselves sorely aggrieved at their rescue. They regarded 
it as a proof that God considered them to be the greatest 
among sinners, and would not accept a sacrifice at their 
hands. The number of victims in this second Paleostrovsky 
"locking up" was also about 1500. 

Religious mania could go no farther. About ten thou- 
sand people, men and women together, met their deaths in 
this terrible way in the north of Russia only during this 
long period of persecution. The number of those who 



THE RASCOL. 259 

perished on the scaffold, or in the torture-chamber, or in 
dungeons, must have been still greater. 

But the Rascol was no longer extinguishable. Its mem- 
bers grew red-hot in their religious ardor, which carried 
them triumphantly through two centuries, and stood the 
test of fire and sword, as well as of the incredible hardships 
of evcry-day life which these people had to endure for the 
sake of their faith. 

With all their zeal the authorities could not succeed in 
finding out the hiding-places of all the Eascolniks. The 
vastness of the country, its peculiar topography, the great 
sparseness of the population, and the absence of roads, all 
combined to paralyze their efforts. Modern investigators 
of the Rascol state that even nowadays there exist in the 
virgin forests of Perm and Viatka whole villages of Rascol- 
niks who are totally unknown to the authorities, and who 
live perfectly independently, paying no taxes and furnish- 
ing no conscripts for the army. 

Two centuries ago such a state of things was yet easier 
to bring about. The Rascolnik settlers gathered together 
in these secluded hamlets were mostly destitute wanderers, 
without money, often only half clad, and but imperfectly 
provided with implements for work. They had to win a 
precarious livelihood from the ungrateful earth, struggling 
all the time with the severity of the arctic winter and the 
wild beasts of the forest, w^ith the constant additional anx- 
iety of never feeling secure against their sudden discovery 
by the imperial soldiers and police. The noble courage 
and undaunted endurance displayed by the early Rascolnik 
pioneers is perhaps a more convincing, though less striking, 
illustration of their religious fervor than those outbursts of 
mixed frenzy and despair which resulted in self-immola- 
tion. 

The Rascolniks overcame everything. They established 
their small agricultural colonies on a permanent footing far 



260 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

and wide over the northern littoral up to the woody slopes 
of the Urals. 

Many of their colonists crossed the mountains and 
founded colonies on the Siberian main, and even beyond 
the dominion of the Niconians. Others, again, found shel- 
ter in the enormous virgin forests of the interior provinces, 
Tchernigov, Novgorod, Orel, and others. In short, the 
Rascol conquered for itself a vast though fragmentary ter- 
ritory, and has never since lost it. This fact is of the 
greatest importance, and accounts for much in the whole 
history of the Eascol which would otherwise be perplexing 
—its great stability, as well as the social and political in- 
fluence exercised by it on orthodox or official Russia. 

From its very beginning, or rather from the moment 
when the Rascol was taken up by the peasantry, it was 
something more than an exclusively religious movement. 
There were only too many grievances, besides that of the 
compulsory introduction of a new ritual, to burden the 
minds of the people in the middle of the seventeenth cen- 
tury. The gradual subjection of the people to the nobility ; 
the centralization of ecclesiastical power in the hands of 
the bishops, to the prejudice of the parishes, which had 
formerly elected and controlled their own curates; a cor- 
responding suppression of local franchise, and the increas- 
ing abuses of bureaucratic centralization ; the unprecedented 
overburdening of the people with taxes, in order to meet 
the growing expenditure of the unwieldy Empire — all these 
evils were so many distinctive marks of the Czar Alexis's 
reign. 

A peasant converted into an apostle of the Rascol, and 
throwing his whole soul into his creed, could not keep 
silence on the wrongs inflicted on his kith and kin by the 
same hateful Niconians who had corrupted the faith, while 
the ill-treatment of the Christians was only one more proof 
of the apostasy of the so-called orthodox. Thus did politi- 



THE RASCOL. 261 

cal and economical discontent walk hand in hand with re- 
ligious opposition. 

The Eascol grew to be the embodiment of popular aspi- 
rations in their entirety, as opposed to those which the 
bureaucratic State and Church forced upon the people. 
This much increased its attractiveness to the masses. 

"When the Rascolniks conquered a new territory for them- 
selves, they were, as a matter of course, able to put their 
ideas into practice. They at once established there a social 
and political order in accordance with the popular ideas of 
freedom, equality, and autonomy. The more numerous the 
Rascolnik settlements became, the better were they able 
to protect themselves against the Government, either by 
bribery, by craft, or by the imposing display of their 
forces. 

Up to quite recent times there have always been vast 
tracts of land belonging to the Rascolniks over which, pro- 
tected by distance and topographical position, the State has 
practically wielded no authority whatever. Serfs no longer 
able to bear the yoke of slavery, soldiers or conscripts es- 
caping from the rod of the drill-master, criminals, insolvent 
tax-payers — all found a safe refuge in the Rascol settle- 
ments, lost to the outside world in the depths of the track- 
less forests. 

In former ages the discontented had repaired to the 
free steppes which bordered the Empire. Here, in the 
fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, arose the powerful mili- 
tary republic of the Don Cossacks, with aflSliatcd branches 
on the rivers Yaik and Volga. Many of the first Rascol- 
niks followed the same well - known track, and found a 
warm welcome and safety among this warlike population. 

It is a suggestive fact that nowhere else were the prop- 
agandists of the Rascol so successful as in these centres of 
social and political discontent. The Cossacks of the Don 
and Yaik sided in a body with the Rascol. Later on, under 



262 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTPwY. 

the leadership of Pugatchev, they fought its battles as well 
as those of the enslaved peasantry. 

This terrible insurrection, which imperilled the Empire 
of Catherine II., was planned and got up in the Rascolnik 
monasteries of the Irghis. The Pretender fought under 
the standard on which the Rascolnik cross, with eight 
points, was emblazoned. In his proclamations he an- 
nounced that to his people were granted, " with the cross 
and with the beard, cheap salt and free land, meadows, and 
fisheries." This was the joint programme of the religious 
and social rebellion. 

Since the time of Peter the Great the Cossacks, though 
maintaining their full autonomy, had no longer been al- 
lowed to receive fugitives from the inner provinces in their 
midst. The hand of the Czar had been laid heavily upon 
them since the bloody suppression of the Boulavin rising. 
The Rascol was the only outlet for the accumulated popu- 
lar discontent excited by this tempestuous reign, which 
marks a new epoch in the history of the Rascol as in all 
other branches of our social and political life. 

The total remoulding of the State ; the long and heavy 
wars ; the building of new towns ; the construction of new 
roads and new canals, demanded enormous sacrifices in 
men, money, and gratuitous work. It was a colossal in- 
vestment of which posterity has reaped the benefits, but 
its burden was often too heavy for the shoulders of con- 
temporary men. Serfdom assumed a new and most hate- 
ful form ; the peasants, who had formerly " gone with " 
the soil, now became the private property of the masters. 
The conscription for the newly created standing army was 
established. There were as many as forty levies during 
the reign of Peter the Great alone, five of which were 
throughout the country. Forty thousand people were or- 
dered to come at their own expense to aid in the build- 
ing of St. Petersburg, without counting those who dug the 



THE RASCOL. 263 

canals. The hated poll-tax was established, and the money 
collected with great cruelty. Peter, in one of his ukases, 
reprimands his officers for behaving so " coarsely " to the 
peasants that sometimes whole villages were dispersed. 
Indeed, they tortured their victims by the rope and by fire, 
and cast them out naked into the bitter frost. 

The towns-people fared no better. Endless suffering was 
inflicted on them by the Czar's capricious ukases about 
changing their national dresses, saddles, boots, etc., which 
were always accompanied by threats of *^ capital punish- 
ment and the confiscation of all goods in the event of dis- 
obedience," the usual refrain of all these proclamations of 
the impatient Czar. It is easy to realize what a field was 
opened to abuses and plunder on the part of the officials 
by such Draconian prescriptions, which were often absolute- 
ly unexecutable, and always most unsuitable in our climate. 

In addition to all this, there was only too much in the 
work of reformation undertaken by the great Emperor that 
deeply w^ounded the feelings as well as injured the material 
interests of the people. In his fiery, almost frenzied, energy 
he made allowance for nothing, and respected nothing ; he 
trampled down inveterate habits and sacred traditions for 
the sake of a hobby with as little compunction as when a 
masterly piece of statesmanship depended on it. He hor- 
rified the masses, who considered many of his orders to be 
nothing less than sacrilege. When Strelez Stepan, the 
prime mover in Boulavin's insurrection, arrived in Astra- 
khan from Moscow, he terrified the citizens by the report 
that the Czar, who had recently returned from a visit to 
foreign countries, had ordered the people to " shave off 
their beards " (which was true), adding, by way of amplifi- 
cation, " and to bow down to idols." This latter mandate 
was, in the popular imagination, the natural outcome of 
the former. 

Since the Council of 1666 had pronounced an anathema 



264 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

against the old faitb, the Rascolniks had announced that the 
reign of Antichrist had begun. The date of the Council, 
1666, was held to be a most clear confirmation of this view ; 
for did it not combine the apocalyptical thousand years of 
Satan's bondage with the " number of the beast ?" The pop- 
ular theologians had no doubt whatever about it, and an- 
nounced, on the authority of the same book, that as the 
reign of Antichrist was to last over three years, the end of 
the world would therefore come in 1669. They fixed even 
the date of this portentous event. Some declared it would 
come about on the eve of Whitsunday, others at the same 
hour on the eve of Quinquagesima Sunday. 

The discovery was striking enough to stir the popular 
imagination, and many took the bait. When, however, the 
fatal nights had passed over, and the whole of 1669 with 
them, and yet the w^orld was left standing pretty much as 
before, the over-bold prophets had to experience the usual 
meed of jokes and abuses from the disappointed people. 
Protopop Avvacum, the most prominent of the early Ras- 
colniks, explained, as most unsuccessful oracles are wont to 
do, that his prophecy about the reign of Antichrist must be 
taken in a spiritual sense — that Antichrist had not yet come 
in the flesh, but that he reigned in the spirit in the contam- 
inated Church. 

With the advent to power of Peter the Great the Rascol 
substituted for the spiritual Antichrist a living and striking- 
ly concrete one in the person of the Czar himself. A sov- 
ereign who strove to deprive the men of their likeness to 
God by taking off their beards; who had numbered the 
people in defiance of a clear prohibition of the Lord ; who 
changed the times of the years and the days of the saints 
(introduction of the new calendar in place of the old one, 
which had begun the year on the 1st of September) ; who 
had married an unchristened heathen (a Protestant, Cath- 
erine I.), and had had her crowned as empress in the church ; 



THE RASCOL. 265 

who daily committed what was by the people regarded as 
sacrilege — could not be other than Antichrist himself. A 
certain Talizin, merchant by occupation and Rascolnik by 
creed, was the first to formulate these views in writing. 
He was arrested, tortured, and condemned to be suffocated 
to death by smoke. But the idea struck root ; it generated 
spontaneously in the minds of thousands. 

Panic-stricken by the dread of Antichrist, and driven on 
by the unbearable hardships of their lives, scores of thou- 
sands of the peasants and artisans of the towns fled to the 
Rascol's settlements in search of bodily and spiritual safety. 

During the first years of his reign Czar Peter persecuted 
the Rascolniks fiercely, seeing in them the mainstay of all 
his political opponents. But when he became convinced of 
their political harmlessness he left them alone. Religious 
intolerance was repugnant to his broad, secular mind. Pro- 
vided the Rascolniks paid a double poll-tax, they might pray 
after which fashion they chose. 

The Ions: war of extermination watted aorainst the Rascol 
came to a stand-still. It was far from being a complete 
peace ; but the Rascolniks were no longer hunted down by 
the Government. Thenceforth they were able to make per- 
manent homes for themselves, and to devote themselves to 
the ordinary pursuits of life — to business and to study. 
Their persecution became fitful, and was never carried to 
anything like the same excess as in former times. 

Thus does the epoch of Peter the Great mark both the 
definite constitution of the Rascol as a separate creed, and 
also the starting-point of that curious sort of popular culture 
which the Rascol has developed. 



CHAPTER in. 

The vast movement of popular thought known by the 
name of Rascol, and which extended over two centuries, 
was not a uniform one. It was composed of very many 
different currents of thought, and embodied many different 
sects, bitterly hostile to one another, and having in com- 
mon only their hatred towards the dominant Church. 

To describe and classify them is not an easy task. There 
w^ere numberless " splits " among the Rascolniks of all de- 
nominations. Hundreds of sects were founded, destined 
sometimes to melt away again in a few years, sometimes to 
embrace some millions of adherents within their folds, and 
to give rise to further " splits " and subdivisions.* Our 
moujiks, who are the most associative and orderly race of 
men, and combine together for all kinds of work almost as 
readily and naturally as do the bees for the construction of 
the honey-comb, seem to share with their brethren of the 
educated classes an absolute unruliness in the matter of 
speculative thought — that is, when they begin to have any 
at all. Orthodox peasants were wont to say that among the 
Rascolniks *^ every moujik formed a sect, and every haha 
(peasant woman) a persuasion." It was not so bad as this, 
of course, but there was a grain of truth in the accusation, 
especially in the more extreme and thoroughgoing sects. 

The very earnestness of the people in their newly awa- 



* In the eighteenth century, according to our ecclesiastical writers, 
the number of sects known to the authorities reached to upwards of 
two hundred. * 



THE RASOOL. 267 

kened yearning after religious truth made it impossible that 
one mould should fit all. Their lights were scanty, but 
every man of strong individuality wished to grope his own 
way. 

Few of these self-taught theologians yielded to the weight 
of established opinion, and when they began to preach their 
own they invariably found at least a few people willing to 
accept their doctrine and ready to cause a split. The big 
Rascolnik sects must not be considered as homogeneous 
bodies holding to one profession of faith, as do, for instance, 
the Western Protestant sects of various denominations. 

With reference to our Rascol, the word "sect" will 
always mean a more or less numerous group of distinct 
creeds, having some common characteristics — a current of 
thouorht, rather than definite articles of belief. 

We will not go into details, of course, and will only 
mention those few sects which tend to illustrate the Rascol 
as a whole, marking broadly some new departure in the 
history of their religious thought or religious emotions. 
We will begin with a few words about a very interesting 
group of mystic sects, which stand somewhat apart from 
the main current of the Rascol. 

While the newly awakened religious enthusiasm of the 
masses found an outlet for its energies in the formation of 
the several branches of the ritualistic Rascol, a considerable 
fraction were gathered into sects having a far more exalted 
ideal, which left mere formal ritualism altogether behind. 
Their over-excited religious feelings longed for something 
more than the mere possession of true books, true rites, true 
ikons. The hearts of the faithful yearned to come to closer 
quarters with the object of their passionate worship. They 
were unsatisfied alike by the records of the past or the 
hope of future fellowship with God ; they spurned the dis- 
tance which separates the earth and sky, and dreamed that 
it might be possible to bring back the days when they 



268 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

were joined. The obedient imagination is never slow to 
answer to aspirations and longings of such intensity. The 
spontaneous shooting up of mystic sects of various kinds, 
which is always one of the phenomena of periods of general 
religious excitement, is the natural outcome of such a state 
of the public mind. The higher or lower standard of cult- 
ure prevailing among the people determines the more or 
less refined or gross form in which this mysticism finds 
its manifestation. No wonder, then, that with the Russian 
peasants of two centuries ago mysticism assumed the gross- 
est form of belief in the living incarnation of God, Christ, 
and the Holy Virgin. 

There are indications in our ancient annals that erratic 
sects of this class have appeared sporadically almost since 
the first introduction of Christianity into Russia, but it is 
difficult to determine whether these are to be regarded as 
samples of Christian mysticism, or simply as the last refuge 
of some form of aboriginal or Finnish Shamanism, which 
had so strong an attraction for our people. At all events, 
the vast spread of mystic sects among the Russian peasantry 
sprang from the excitement consequent on the great schism 
of the seventeenth century. 

The founding of these sects is by regular tradition attrib- 
uted to one Danilo Filipovitch, a peasant of the province of 
Kostroma, who lived in the time of Nicon, and is represented 
as being a man of great piety. He spent many years in 
prayer in a cave near the Volga River, and in studying the 
old as well as the new missals. At last he put all of them 
into a sack and threw them into the river, declaring that 
" revelation came from the livinor God alone." 

At a public gathering, where Danilo Filipovitch was sur- 
rounded by his followers, God Sabaoth descended upon 
him, and thenceforth took up His abode in his body; thus 
was Danilo Filipovitch God's first incarnation. This man 
had many disciples and worshippers who believed in him. 



THE KASCOL. 269 

At a later date these sects developed into a vast secret 
society, disseminated far and wide through all the big 
towns and many of the provinces of the Empire. They 
called themselves the Ckrists, but the orthodox derisively 
converted this name into Chlists, which in our language 
means Whips, The name was appropriate, as self-flagella- 
tion played an important part in their religious rites. It is 
under this name — Chlists — that the sects belonging to this 
class are known among our people and to ecclesiastical his- 
tory. Their ramifications are the " Jumpers," " Dancers," 
** Shaloputs," the Skopzy, and others. Most of them re- 
mained undiscovered, as the greatest secrecy was observed 
by all of them, and their existence was only accidentally 
revealed. Their radenias, or nightly worship, consisted in 
various practices calculated to excite the nerves and to 
raise their religious enthusiasm to fever-heat by artificial 
means, such as by dancing round with their eyes fixed on 
their living Christs or Virgin Marys seated in their midst ; 
by singing the choruses of religious songs and verses; by 
jumping, by spinning round like peg-tops on their heels, by 
shaking their bodies from side to side, by flagellation. 

As the sexual instincts were also excited by these spirit- 
ual orgies, the radenias of the Chlists generally wound up 
in a svalny grek^ or promiscuous orgie, the lights being sud- 
denly put out. It is an interesting fact that of all the dis- 
senters the Chlists were the only ones who made converts 
amono: the " educated " elements of Russian societv — amonor 
officials, the military, and the landlords, of whom several 
appeared in the Chlist trials of the eighteenth and the be- 
ginning of the nineteenth centuries. 

The relations between the sexes present much irregularity 
among all the Chlistic sects. Some of them revive, by a 
sort of social atavism, certain obsolete forms of family life, 
wherein the " headship " was accorded to women. Others 
admit polygamy and heterism ; while others again protest 



270 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

vehemently against family life under any form, preaching 
absolute abstinence and the mutilation of the body as the 
only means whereby man can attain to physical purity. 
These latter are the Skopzy, or Castrati, founded by Seliva- 
nov at the close of the eighteenth century. 

It must not be supposed, however, that there was nothing 
about these Chlists save these promiscuous orgies on the one 
hand and the monstrosity of self-mutilation on the other. 
Time wrought its changes, both in their religious views and 
in their practices. The Skopzy, who have been the most 
studied, and who are the wildest of all the Chlistic sects, 
offer an illustration of this gradual triumph of reason over 
the darkest regions of superstition. Nowadays the number 
of regular Skopzy is small. Most of them view the doc- 
trine of abstinence as directed against excess, and accept 
the view that regular matrimony is the best aid to moral 
perfection. 

The fundamental doctrine of the Chlists — that of repeated 
incarnation — offered ample latitude for the difference be- 
tween gross idolatry and the simple belief in the personal 
presence. They, from the first, admitted their belief in a 
certain gradation of inspiration or incarnation, bestowed in 
varying degrees by the three persons of the Trinity. God 
the Father, since the inspiration of the body of Danilo 
Filipovitch, the founder of the Chlists, has, they believe, 
only twice descended upon men, and both occasions were 
in times remote. God the Son has, according to them, 
appeared oftener, though still at long intervals. The Holy 
Ghost, on the contrary, very frequently descends on men ; 
He permanently inspires the bodies of recognized prophets, 
and temporarily dwells in all the faithful during the hours 
of worship, when they are seized by religious frenzy. 

The sobering influences of time, labor, and meditation 
have suppressed in some of their number the grossest forms 
of worship, and have reduced religious intoxication to a 



THE KASCOL. 271 

milder state, in which they no longer trammel the regular 
functions of the mind. The Chlistic sects, which entirely 
rejected the shackles imposed by the rites, as well as those 
of the letter of the Scripture, were the only ones in which 
religious thought had no obstacle to its boldest flight. 
We should not for our part wonder if it was some day 
discovered that the Dukhohorzy^ the most original and 
philosophical of our denominations, whose origin is un- 
known, had been cradled in some branch of the Chlistic 
Church. 

We cannot, however, dwell at any length on the sects 
which fall under this category. They are interesting on 
their own account, but they have had no great historical 
influence. The people, as a whole, shunned them, and kept 
aloof from them. Let us, therefore, pass on to the bigger 
sections of old non-conformity. 

The Rascol proper, the " Old Believers," who held stoutly 
to their ancient books and rites, split, at a very early stage, 
into two great sections : 

I. The Popovzy^ or sacerdotal section, and 

II. The Beglopopovzy^ or priestless section. 

The great point was, that when the split in the Church 
occurred, only one bishop, Paul of Kolomna, sided with the 
Rascol. But he died soon after, without having ordained 
a successor. Now, according to the orthodox canons of 
Scripture, only a bishop can lawfully confer ordination on 
a priest. 

When, therefore, the Rascolnik pops, who had been or- 
dained in by-gone days, died out, in the ordinary course of 
nature, there was nobody to fill their places. In this per- 
plexity some of the Rascol niks proposed to accept as right- 
ful ministers the newly ordained orthodox (Niconian) pops, 
provided that they abjured Niconian fallacies and returned 
to the true faith (t.^., old books and rites). They admitted 
that, by the peculiar grace of God, the sanctity of the priest- 



272 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

hood was preserved in the Niconian Church, its apostasy 
notwithstanding:. 

But the majority of the Rascolniks indignantly" rejected 
such a compromise. They refused to recognize any value 
in the Niconian ordainment, while rejecting as worthless 
their Baptism, Eucharist, and all other ministrations. They 
accordingly remained without any pops at all. Thus did 
the two great branches of the ritualistic Rascol spring into 
existence. 

The former, the Popovzy, number at the present day 
about three to four millions. In the course of time they 
divided into four denominations, which differ only in their 
mode of obtaining priests. 

The original Popovzy or Beglopopovzy, which in olden 
times formed the great majority, but now are confined to 
a few scattered communes, received the renegade orthodox 
priesthood. With them the ecclesiastical practice resolved 
itself into this : 

They kept a keen eye on all the orthodox pops within 
their ken, and when one of them was dismissed or likely to 
be dismissed by his bishop for drunkenness or bad behav- 
ior, or was eager to get a good living coupled with an easy 
life, some cunning emissary of the Popovzy was sent to him 
to try to win him over to the Rascol. A converted pop, 
before being allowed to officiate, was rebaptized by his new 
parishioners, as was also the practice with every Niconian ; 
only the pop had in this case to jump into the water in full 
clerical vestments, as a precaution lest the sacrament of the 
Holy Orders should be washed off in the operation. 

Needless to say that the article thus procurable by the 
Rascolniks was not the best of its kind, especially as time 
passed, and the clergy became sufficiently literate to under- 
stand the ridiculous narrowness of the Rascol. 

But the Popovzy did not care about their priests' mo- 
rality. They wanted them, and they paid them liberally for 



THE EASCOL. 273 

performing certain rites in which they believed — a view 
which, in another form, is still shared by the bulk of their 
orthodox brethren. 

In 1800 the Government, advised by the Metropolitan of 
Moscow, Platon, resolved to take a step which it ought to 
have taken at least one hundred years earlier. The stupid 
excommunication launched by the Council of 1666 against 
those who adhered to the old books was cancelled, the 
points of divergence declared irrelevant, and the Metropoli- 
tan of Moscow permitted to ordain men for the Kascolnik 
priesthood chosen by their own body, and observing in the 
ceremony the old anti-Niconian rites, and authorizing them 
to use their old books. Had a similar course been adopted 
in time, there would have been no Rascol at all. Now it 
was too late. The Rascol, such as it was, had come to be 
"the creed of their forefathers." The Popovzy were sus- 
picious lest these concessions might conceal some design to 
allure them into Niconianism altogether. The attempt at 
reconciliation practically collapsed. The total number of 
reunited Popovzy only amounted to a few hundreds of 
thousands, and there is little likelihood that they will ever 
noticeably increase ; many have relapsed once more into the 
Rascol. 

Their early suspicions were confirmed only too soon — 
the Edinoverzy have been gradually deprived of the right 
of choosing their own ministers, a right by which they set 
great store. Now their pops are nominated or removed by 
the bishop's chapter, without the parishioners having any 
voice in the matter, so utterly unable is our Church to tol- 
erate even the appearance of any shadow of independence. 

The bulk of the Popovzy tried to manage with their run- 
away priesthood as a makeshift ; but as they were both scarce 
and expensive, a new and far more convenient mode of sup- 
plying the religious wants of the community was gradually 
introduced. Old men — starik — well read in the Scriptures 
18 



274 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

and of good morals, were appointed by the parishes as the 
pops' substitutes. They did not celebrate the mass, which 
is the privilege of those in Holy Orders, but they purchased 
from the neighboring Popovzy church a supply of conse- 
crated wafers and oil, and administered it when needful. 
They confessed, conducted funerals, and performed a sort 
of provisory marriage ceremony. People got accustomed 
to being ministered to by these elected stariks, who were, 
moreover, always at hand, took no fees, and expected no 
revenue from their office, which they accepted as an honor. 
Thus did the starikovshina grow into existence. 

In 1844 the Popovzy, by a stroke of good-fortune, ob- 
tained what they had vainly sought since their first seces- 
sion, a bishop of their own. Ambrosius of Bosnia quar- 
relled with the Patriarch of Constantinople, and after much 
hesitation consented to exchange his precarious position for 
that of the head of the three millions of Rascolniks — so at 
least he was promised by his tempters. He established his 
seat at Belo-Kriniza, in Austria, as it would have been ab- 
surd for so precious a man to risk his life within the do- 
minions of the Emperor Nicolas. The success of Ambro- 
sius was very great indeed. He was acknowledged by most 
of the Popovzy, especially by those in big towns, and sup- 
plied them with as many pops and archpops and bishops 
as they required. A complete and independent ecclesiasti- 
cal hierarchy was thus established for all the Popovzy who 
desired it, but their religious ardor had by this time cooled 
down so much that a good many of them preferred to re- 
main with their elected stariks, who were much less exact- 
ing and more accommodating. A fraction, the Popovzy of 
the province of Toola, stuck with strange persistency to the 
traditional " runaway priesthood." The same feeling pre- 
vailed among their fellow-w^orshippers in Siberia. 

As a whole, the Popovzy offers one of many illustrations 
of the remarkable associative capacity of the Russian mou- 



THE RASCOL. 275 

jiks. Their organization, embracing several millions of peo- 
ple, with a permanent administrative council, a number of 
vast public benevolent institutions, and an exchequer con- 
taining upwards of- ten millions of rubles (confiscated or 
simply robbed by the Emperor Nicolas L), presents the 
most extensive example on record among similar popular 
organizations. For the rest, the Popovzy are the most 
backward and obtuse of all the members of our Rascol. 
Their opponents, the Beglopopovzy, or priestless, who form 
the larger section of the two, are also by far the more intel- 
lectually active. They number about eight or nine millions 
of adherents, but these are divided into no end of sects 
and persuasions, which may be grouped into four distinct 
branches. 

I. Pomorzy, or the sea-shore sects, so named from the 
place, the northern sea-coast, where they founded their first 
settlements ; thence, later on, disseminating their tenets all 
over the Empire. This is the oldest and most moderate 
branch of the " priestless," and at the same time the most 
intellectual, numbering among its leaders the best educated 
and most clear-headed men of the Rascol. 

II. The Fedoseevzijy who separated from the main body 
of the Pomorzy in the beginning of the eighteenth century. 
They form another powerful branch of the " priestless," vy- 
ing in social and political importance with the Pomorzy, 
though standing considerably behind them intellectually. 
They are younger and more extreme in their views than the 
Pomorzy, but have preserved more of the wooden formal- 
ism of the old Rascol. 

III. The Beguny^ or Wanderers. This is the youngest 
branch of the " priestless," and by far the most extreme. 
Its numbers are small compared with the two former, but 
its influence is very considerable, as it has drawn within its 
fold the boldest and most passionate elements of dissent. 

IV. Finally come the Filipovzy (the middle of the eigh- 



276 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

teenth century), which has much in common with the Fedo- 
seevzy, though it is somewhat more extreme. The Filipovzy 
represent a tardy revival of the narrow fanaticism of the 
old Kascol. Their early followers went to the kngth of 
renewing, as an article of faith, the doctrine of " baptism by 
fire," or self-immolation. They cooled down after a time, 
but have not developed to the same extent, nor played so 
important a part in Russia, as the three above-named branch- 
es of the priestless Rascol. 

Each of these sects, as well as each of their numberless 
subdivisions, presents of course some point of difference in 
its doctrines. But these divergences are quite irrelevant in 
themselves. True to the spirit of the Rascol, they refer to 
matters of exterior worship or symbolism. Thus', Theodo- 
sius of Fedosy, the founder of the great sect which bears 
his name, summed up his points of disagreement with the 
Pomorzy in nine theses, among which the following are to 
be found: **It is wrong and heretical to write the words 

* Jesus Christ, the King of Glory,' over the crucifix, as the 
Pomorzy do. The crucifix should bear Pilate's inscription, 

* Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.' " In another thesis 
he strove to establish the doctrine that at the Easter service, 
when exclaiming, " Christ is risen," the faithful should raise 
their hands. A third thesis prohibited men from bowing 
to the earth during all fast-days save those of Lent. Only 
one of the nine theses deals with a matter which sounds like 
something more essential; while insisting on celibacy and 
abstinence for all the faithful, Fedosy forbade any of his 
disciples to assume the position and the name of " monk." 

The doctrinal divergences of the Filipovzy are of exactly 
the same stamp. 

As to the Beguny, they are not so advanced even as this 
implies, accepting without any noticeable modification the 
doctrine of the Fedoseevzy, 

The real difference between the various sects of the 



THE RASCOL. 277 

" priestless " Rascolniks refers to the emotional rather than 
to the doctrinal elements of their creed. They differ greatly 
in their mode of enunciating a doctrine on which, theoret- 
ically, all the " priestless " sects are agreed ; namely, that 
of the reign of Antichrist. All the "priestless" started 
with admitting the real and bodily existence of Antichrist 
in the person of the Czar Peter, and then in the persons of 
his successors. The doctrine was not rejected by any of 
their sect, but it was considerably modified in the course of 
time. 

The Pomorzy broadened and "spiritualized" this idea, 
until so little of the essence of Antichrist attached to the 
men in authority that it might be disregarded; so small 
indeed was it that it could not even stand in the way of 
public prayers being offered for their head, the Czar. They 
modified, it is true, the orthodox formula of the prayer, 
rejecting the laudatory epithets referring to religion. The 
compromise still proved to be unpalatable to a good many 
Rascolniks. 

Fedosy, and afterwards Filip, gave expression to these 
grovelling sentiments. This was at the bottom of their 
split, and also of their success. Both these sects vehemently 
denounced this practice of the Pomorzy as an abomination, 
reinstating the doctrine of the bodily presence of Anti- 
christ in all its strength. 

Both the Fedoseevzy and Filipovzy were cruelly perse- 
cuted by the Government, whom they obstinately vilified as 
the ministers of Antichrist. The Fedoseevzy admitted no 
prayers for the Czar, even after, thanks to underhand influ- 
ence, they had obtained a good deal of toleration, and had 
established their headquarters at Moscow, where they owned 
a vast almshouse — large enough to hold several thousand in- 
mates — a school, "a board of administration, and a treasury, 
which all appeared in the police reports under the heading 
" burial-ground." 



278 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

When the Emperor Paul I. ascended the throne, most 
exaggerated rumors concerning his rashness and unruly tem- 
per were rife among such Russians as took any interest in 
politics. It was reported that he was particularly ill-dis- 
posed towards the Rascolniks, and wished to put them down 
at any price. The then spiritual leader of the Moscow 
Fedoseevzy, a certain Kovylin, a merchant of great wealth 
and not unexceptionable morality, was seized with such a 
panic that he at once ordered that prayers for the Emperor 
should be introduced into the liturgy, and even went so far 
as to add to the Emperor's name the epithet of *' truly be- 
lieving,'' which was a sort of covert denial of the Eascol 
and recognition of the dominant creed. 

After the Emperor Paul I. had been killed, and the tol- 
erant Alexander I. filled his place, Kovylin wanted to drop 
the prayers for the Emperor from the liturgy, and to return 
to the old practice ; but the cooling process w^as by that time 
so far advanced that he met with strong opposition. An 
influential Rascolnik preacher, Jacob Kholin, began to agi- 
tate among the Moscow Fedoseevzy in favor of " rendering 
unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's." For this pur- 
pose he visited the affiliated colonies of his sect in Yaroslav, 
Starodoob, Riga, and St. Petersburg, and easily succeeded in 
inducing a considerable number of the Fedoseevzy parishes 
of their own free-will to sanction that which Kovylin had 
done in a moment of panic. 

Here once more the old legacy of hatred was revived, 
probably for the last time, and certainly in the most furious 
and uncompromising form. In 1811 the authorities dis- 
covered in the province of Tambov the existence of a new 
sect called Strannikt/, or Beguny (Wanderers), who were 
at once declared to be "very dangerous," and accordingly 
knouted and transported to the Siberian mines. The Stran- 
niky were an offshoot of the Fedoseevzy, their founder 
having been one of them, a certain Ephimius, or Efim, the 



THE RASCOL. 279 

deserter. For a long time these people had their headquar- 
ters in Sopeiki, a village in the province of Yaroslav. The 
distinct characteristics of their sect consisted in the full de- 
velopment of the doctrine of the reign of Antichrist. 

The " wanderers " made this article of faith the key-note 
of their teaching. The Czar is in their opinion the Prophet 
of the Beast ; the oflBcials are his ministers ; the two-headed 
Imperial eagle is the seal of Antichrist, the sign of the 
dragon. Every one who offers any kind of homage to the 
agents of Antichrist, or who pays taxes for their unholy 
purposes, or allows himself to be numbered and registered, 
or accepts a passport or any other document sealed with 
the Imperial emblem, excludes himself from the book of 
the living, and is doomed to perdition as Antichrist's ser- 
vant and abettor. 

They look upon their coreligionists who came to terms 
with the Beast with the same disgust and abhorrence as 
they lavish on the Niconians. 

In describing ** the renewing of Antichrist," as the ** wan- 
derers" call the Emperor's coronation, their founder Efim 
indulges in the following details : " Then there come to 
worship him — i.e., to offer him the oath of allegiance — 
those fierce fiends the bishops, then the mock-pops (Satan's 
horses, who transport souls to hell, to their father the evil 
one) ; next follow the various foul apostatic sects — the Ni- 
conians first, then the Old Believers (Popovzy), the accursed 
Armenians, and the Pomorzy, who are hateful to God." 

The faithful are warned to resist anything emanating 
from the Czar, and as they cannot do this successfully, that 
their only safety lies in flight. The most zealous of these 
sectarians carry out this principle to the letter. They spend 
their lives in wandering from place to place. They never 
remain for long together in the same locality, always living 
concealed in the houses of their hosts without the knowl- 
edge of the authorities. They pay no taxes, apply for no 



280 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

passports, give no bribes, and avoid all contact with the 
assents of Antichrist. Those who have not the couragre or 
the worldly means wherewith to lead such an existence con- 
tinue to live in the world, concealing those who have at- 
tained to a higher grade of perfection and purity than 
themselves. The houses of the settled adherents of the 
sect are always built after a peculiar plan, and ingeniously 
provided with hiding-places, undiscoverable by the uniniti- 
ated, wherein they lodge their guests. Each member of 
the sect, however, with but a few exceptions, towards the 
close of his life betakes himself to actual wandering, or se- 
cludes himself in some way from the world polluted by the 
presence of Antichrist, in order that he may have his soul 
cleansed through repentance before he lies on his death-bed. 

With the authorities the regular " wanderers " are even 
at the present time at daggers drawn. They are persecuted 
as " particularly dangerous," even when there is no offence 
to be laid to their charge. On their part, too, the " wan- 
derers" make no concessions to the civil authorities, and 
are bitterly offended against such of their coreligionists 
who offer up prayers for their enemy the Czar. 

" They [the other Rascolniks] meet in their churches and 
begin to offer prayers to God for him, the apostate — Anti- 
christ ! They sing and they read, * God preserve our reign- 
ing Czar, and give him victory over those who stand up 
against him.' . . . But think, O you blasphemer, for which 
victory are you praying ! . . . The victory against those who 
in obedience to the Holy Word hide themselves in mount- 
ains and forests and in the caverns of the earth to avoid 
his face, and who will not swear allegiance to him, nor give 
their children up to him, nor pay him taxes, nor allow him 
to number their souls. What you are praying for is that 
he should overcome them and make them his prisoners. 
O you servants of Antichrist, upholders of the devil, defend- 
ers of the seven-headed serpent !" 



THE RASCOL. 281 

Yet notwithstanding all the intensity of feeling and sin- 
gleness of mind displayed by this interesting sect, it has 
not been able to avoid undergoing the same transformation 
which the Old Believers, the Pomorzy and the Fedoseevzy, 
had experienced before them. Of the three chief ramifica- 
tions of this sect, two — namely, the Poshekhon Wanderers 
and the Pless Wanderers (so called after the name of their 
respective headquarters) — still adhere to the above-described 
doctrine; while the third, the Sopelky Wanderers, have 
changed their views. According to them, Antichrist reigns 
spiritually. By this is signified all deviation from the true 
faith. All heretics are in this sense Antichrists, and Anti- 
christ was embodied in Czar Peter more completely than 
in all others only because he held greater power in his 
hands. They preach the virtue of disobedience only to 
such orders of the Government as are unchristian. They 
also decline to take passports, and continue to lead a wan- 
dering life ; but only because in the ofiicial passports deliv- 
ered to sectarians they are designated as Rascolniks, and 
not as " orthodox Christians," as they believe themselves to 
be. As to the "two-headed eagle" which embellishes the 
passports, this no longer scares them. 

Two other ramifications of the same sect have gone still 
further, and have stepped out of Rascol ritualism altogether. 
But of them hereafter. 

Thus, excluding some branches of the " wanderers" and 
a few denominations belonging to intermediate sects, the 
whole of the ritualistic Rascol has cooled down, as far as 
political opposition goes. They have put up with the 
Czar's habit of crossing himself with three fingers, smok- 
ing tobacco, and wearing a German overcoat. Even those 
among the Fedoseevzy and Filipovzy who do not pray for 
him are not the same class of men as those who fled into 
the wilderness in the first transports of a newly revealed 
creed. The Rascol has become a commonplace religion. 



282 THE BUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

Its members received it as an inheritance — they did not 
win it at the cost of inner struggles, doubts, and pains. 
They can be earnest in religious matters, but nothing more. 
The warmer manifestations of the religious feelings are the 
birthright of new sects fresh from the toils of creation. It 
is worth noticing that most of the founders of new sects 
and authors of discord are themselves proselytes, newly con- 
verted to the Rascol from the orthodox Church. 

It is in the nature of all emotions to subside after a time, 
if the provocation ceases to be an active one. The Rascol- 
niks are far from enjoying complete tolerance even now. 
The petty jealousy of the dominant Church still imposes 
on them humiliating restrictions, lest they should think 
themselves the equals of the orthodox. Thus, while foreign 
Christians and all the non-Christian creeds, Mohammedans, 
Jews, and idolaters, are permitted to freely worship after 
their own manner, the Rascol niks are expressly prohibited 
from giving any outward public sign of their worship. 
They may not give to their houses of prayer the exterior 
appearance of churches; they are forbidden to form pro- 
cessions ; they may not announce their hours of prayer by 
the ringing of bells. 

The position of the Rascolniks in the Russia of to-day is 
very much the same as that of the Christians in ancient 
times in Turkish and Saracen countries, where they were 
tolerated with the same vexatious restrictions. Of course, 
all this must be very irritating to the Rascolniks. 

And this is not the worst — they have more serious 
grounds for discontent. The ancient laws of Nicolas I., 
which make " conversion of others " amenable to the crimi- 
nal code, are not yet abrogated. Every " non-registered " 
Rascolnik, which is tantamount to saying nine-tenths of 
them, is liable to prosecution in virtue of this law — if only 
the police or the administration choose to take the trouble. 

The common Rascolniks are rarely molested. But the 



THE RASCOL. 283 

cowardly uncertainty of the law makes it a terrible weapon 
against any prominent dissenters whom somebody in power 
may have the stupidity to fear or the wickedness to hate. 

It will suffice us to mention the fate of three Popovzy 
bishops, Cannon, Arcady, and Ilennady, who were kept in 
the prison of Suzdal monastery from 1856 till 1881, twenty- 
five years (the whole of the reign of Alexander XL), for no 
other offence than that they declined to renounce their ec- 
clesiastical grade as the price of their liberty, in compliance 
with a mean request of the orthodox consistory ; or the case 
of the unfortunate Adrian Pushkin, a merchant of Perm, 
who was possessed with a craze that he himself was a new 
incarnation of Jesus Christ, and sent a paper and a synopti- 
cal picture to the Holy Synod to establish his claims. For 
this offence the unhappy man was kept in strictest solitary 
confinement for fifteen years, and was released when a 
broken old man, only to die a few months afterwards. 

These petty vexations and occasional acts of tyranny 
must of course keep alive among the Rascolniks a certain 
amount of irritation of a political nature. There is, how- 
ever, little probability that the Government should so ex- 
tend the persecutions — of ritualistic dissent at all events — 
'as to foolishly provoke a fresh outburst of what is called 
religious fanaticism. 



CHAPTER IV. 

All the emotional force developed in the Rascol did not 
disappear without leaving any trace behind, by the mere 
fact of its exposure to the cooling influences of life and 
time ; neither was it wasted in acts of self-immolation. A 
fraction of that living power was spent on the useful work 
of the inner regeneration of the social body which gave it 
birth. In stirring up thought, and inducing a number of 
people to exercise their sleeping intellectual faculties, the 
Rascol produced certain intellectual habits, which remained 
as a permanent gain after religious excitement had subsided. 

The Rascol was set up in the name of absolute conserva- 
tism, and for the unconditional denial of the right of the 
human mind to criticise or investigate. The Niconians, on 
the other hand, appeared as the champions of progress, as 
compared with the obtuse Rascolniks. But the opponents^ 
soon changed their weapons. A Rascolnik wanted to think 
and to discover the truth for himself. He stuck to his an- 
cient creed because he cared for it so much, and believed 
himself to be in the right, not because he was^irdcred by the 
superior to believe such and such a thing. His creed was 
of his own choice, the highest interest of his life„ not the 
" business of the patriarch," as was the case with his ortho- 
dox brethren. The knowledge of the Scriptures and of the 
history of the Church was essential to him, to remove his 
own doubts, to defend his creed against his opponents, and 
to spread it, if possible, among his enemies ; it was a de- 
fensive and offensive weapon. Thus, while the orthodox 
peasants, with their well-revised and well-spelled books, re- 



THE RASCOL. 285 

raained utterly ignorant and careless about the religion into 
which they were born, the Rascolniks, from the first, spared 
no efforts to gain some rudiment of Scriptural knowledge. 

When they were allowed to found permanent settlements 
and to live peacefully on their patches of ground some- 
where on the shores of the icy ocean, one of the chief cares 
of the Rascolniks was to provide for the regular education 
of the community. The first, and in many respects the 
most important, of these early settlements was the so-called 
Wygorezie^ a series of villages on the river Wyg, which had 
for their centre the Wyg monastery. This association took 
the lead in the inner history of the Rascol, and may serve 
as a fair model of many similar institutions founded in vari- 
ous times by all the big sects of the "priestless" as well as 
the " priestly " Rascol. 

The Wyg settlement was founded, in 1696, by a small 
body of " priestless " dissenters, under the leadership of two 
brothers, Ignaty and Audrey (Andreas) Denisov. 

The elder, Ignaty, did not stop long with the Wyg peo- 
ple, lie was a remnant of other and more fanatical days, 
which were drawing to a close. The author of the first 
** locking up " of the Paleostrovsky monastery, he perished 
in the flames " for the glory of the faith," with about fif- 
teen hundred others — his followers. Audrey Denisov lived 
to an advanced age, working with head and hands to build 
up the Wyg community, and to consolidate the Rascol 
Church, then scattered all over the Empire. This remark- 
able man was a good representative of a long series of Ras- 
col nik leaders, who united the exaltation peculiar to apostles 
of new creeds with the talents and shrewdness of men of 
business. As a writer and preacher he took an active part 
in the then pending controversy between the priestly and 
priestless Rascol, and was instrumental in giving definite 
shape and the decided victory to the priestless faction over 
their opponents. At the same time, by his example and 



286 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

eloquence he kept the Wyg people together, sustaining 
them amid hardships which were trying even to Russian 
moujiks. 

The colony was so badly provided with the means of 
subsistence that for several winters which followed bad 
harvests they had to feed on what they called " straw 
bread." The straw was pulverized in a mill and diluted 
flour added to it, in so small a quantity that when baked 
the loaves could not hold together; the dough crumbled 
up on the bottom of the oven, and had to be swept out with 
a broom and eaten with spoons. Yet even this meagre 
diet was so scarce that it was only partaken of once a day. 
Even in the better years agriculture in these high latitudes 
hardly supplied the colony with their daily bread. 

One generation saw the whole economical condition of 
the Wyg people improved past all recognition, thanks to 
their spirit of co-operation and to the remarkable business 
talents of their abbot, Audrey Denisov. He was the first 
to conceive and to apply the idea that the mutual confi- 
dence and trust existing between the members of his sect, 
scattered all over the country, might be made the base of 
extensive business relations. The Rascolniks of the Volga, 
of the Don, and of Moscow readily trusted the abbot of 
Wygorezie with their capital, and with unlimited credit, 
while on their side the Wyg people could place equal confi- 
dence in the representatives of the local congregations with 
regard to their commercial affairs. "Without giving up 
agriculture altogether, the Wyg settlers nevertheless devoted 
most of their spare time to the manufacturing industries. 
They produced leathern wares, clothes, iron wares, and agri- 
cultural implements. Their most extensive and lucrative 
trade was in brass-casting. They discovered copper-mines 
in the province of Olonezk, where they extracted the metal 
and worked it to great advantage. They supplied, more- 
over, the whole Rascolnik world with ikons, crosses, and 



THE RASCOL. 287 

other sacred utensils, made strictly after the pattern of an- 
cient orthodox samples. 

The production of these articles was carried on on the 
ordinary Russian co-operative principle, enriching both the 
monastery and the individual workers, who had their share 
in the profits. The capital thus realized was not left lying 
idle. It was chiefly invested in the corn - trade, the most 
profitable in Russia up to the present time. The Wyg 
monastery had at its disposal vast suras of money of its 
own, and also money deposited with it by the Rascolnik 
communities of other towns. The traders in the monastery 
purchased corn in the southern provinces and transported 
it by their own craft to the northern markets, and became 
after a time the chief purveyors to the new capital. Dur- 
ing Denisov's lifetime the Wyg monastery grew to be the 
wealthiest joint-stock company in the Empire. 

The death of Audrey Denisov changed nothing in the 
position of the Wyg community or its policy. The popular 
principle of communal self-government formed the base of 
all Rascolnik organizations. The abbot ruled in the monas- 
tery with the assistance of a body of directors; all were 
elected, and transacted the business of the community " in 
common," consulting it on all important occasions. The 
Wyg monastery ruled in the same spirit over the whole 
suzemok, or " land-union," as the little territory occupied by 
the Rascolnik settlers was called. There was little formality 
in this kind of administration, but still the control of all the 
business was in the hands of the community. Change of 
persons mattered little. This arrangement, reproduced in 
all Rascolnik organizations, accounts for their solidity and 
the good management of their public affairs. 

Regular educational institutions were started in the Wyg 
monastery as soon as the community could make both ends 
meet. The monastery had two regular schools, one for 
adults, another capable of holding several hundred children, 



288 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTBY. 

both male and female, who were brought by their parents 
to the monastery from distant towns and provinces. There 
were also a special body of scribes, who copied books ; a 
collection of old ikons, which served as models for their 
ikon painters, and a good library, furnished with ancient 
books and manuscripts for the use of the studious. Many 
of the future leaders and teachers of the Rascol, both male 
and female, received their education in the Wyg monastery. 
The participation by the women in the studies and activ- 
ities usually confined to men is one of the most sympa- 
thetic peculiarities of the whole Rascol. The women, so 
completely subjugated and so often ill-treated among the 
Great Russian peasantry of the orthodox creed, recovered 
their dignity in the Rascol. The sects were the only bodies 
among the peasantry where intellectual gifts were valued 
highly, and formed the chief claim to respect and influence. 
Religion was to them the supreme interest, and such mem- 
bers of the community as showed the greatest spiritual gifts 
were naturally the most appreciated. Wealth and physical 
strength bowed reverentially before intelligence, eloquence, 
and devotion to the common creed. In the religious bodies 
the w^omen took their place by the side of the men as their 
birthright. They showed the same zeal for their faith and 
the same courage on the scaffold and in the torture cham- 
bers. They studied the Scriptures and preached the Gospel 
as well as the men. Sometimes they founded new sects. 
The names of Akuline Ivanovna, Marianna, Hania, and other 
women were much renowned among the Rascolniks of vari- 
ous persuasions. Very often the posts of '* readers,'' or un- 
ordained presbyters, in various Rascolnik parishes, were filled 
by women. In one sect, the Ochishenzy (the Purified), 
every family had its own priestess. One of the girls — the 
one who seemed the most gifted — was from her childhood 
exempted from all household work, and devoted all her time 
to study and to the reading of the Scriptures. When she 



THE RASCOL. 289 

came of age, she was made the family chaplain, confessor, 
and general spiritual adviser. No important business was 
decided upon without her approbation. 

In all sects alike the women take the leading part in the 
work of education. A special class of women, who re- 
nounced marriage, ihQ Belizy (White Ones), devoted them- 
selves to the education of the Rascolnik children as a pro- 
fession. Sometimes they wandered from village to village, 
sometimes they resided permanently in cloisters specially 
intended for females, to which girls were sent as to board- 
ing-schools. 

All the sects of the Rascol, the "priestly" as well as the 
" priestless," the Pomorzy as well as the Fedoseevzy, spared 
no pains in order to supply their coreligionists with the 
means of education. 

Thus the Rascolniks had their regular popular schools a 
hundred years before the first official schools, for the benefit 
of the State peasants, were founded on paper^ because until 
1861 therc were practically no popular schools for the ortho- 
dox peasantry to attend. Men who knew how to read and 
write were in those times a great rarity among the orthodox 
moujiks, while among the Rascolniks education was common 
among men and with many women. 

The Rascolnik schools, supported and managed by the 
people themselves, without any thievish tchinovnik to 
pocket the funds intended for them, worked tolerably well. 
The instruction the Rascolniks received there was not ex- 
tensive, and had an exclusively religious tendency ; but it 
satisfied the wants of the people for the time being. 

The splits which very soon occurred in the Rascol only 
increased this desire for instruction, as each sect had to 
defend its own position. 

The Rascolniks were exceedingly fond of religious dis- 
cussions, and were constantly arranging controversial con- 
ferences. Sometimes they debated with the orthodox, but 
19 



290 THE RUSSIAN PEA&ANTKY. 

this was neither safe nor particularly interesting. They 
preferred the debates arranged between representatives of 
various branches of the Rascol. Famous preachers and 
debaters met, coming from the farthest extremities of the 
Empire to take part in, or to be present at; these tourna- 
ments, which made a stir all over the Rascolnik world. 

The subjects of discussion were either general, the whole 
doctrine of the respective denominations, or special. Some- 
times questions of mere detail furnished the Rascolnik 
schoolmen with matter for discussion which lasted over 
several days. The thing was taken in great earnest. When 
three famous disputants of the Pomorzy sect came to Sta- 
raia Russa, to hold a disputation with Ensign Fedoseevitcli 
(son of Fedosy, the founder of the sect) about "Pilate's 
Inscription," the latter imposed a fast of several days' dura- 
tion on all his household, that he might obtain from God 
the needful inspiration for the contest. 

As a rule, these disputations resulted only in the greater im- 
bitterment of the animosity between the sects, as none went 
to these meetings in a spirit of conciliation ; but it did not 
prevent the parties from meeting on the field again and again. 

After the debates the chief disputants were wont to set 
down their views in writing in pamphlets and treatises, 
which were copied and widely circulated. The price of 
these manuscript volumes and pamphlets was very moder- 
ate, and within reach of an average purchaser, owing to the 
great competition between the numerous copyists. Thus 
a vast clandestine literature was gradually created, which, 
notwithstanding the narrow field of its speculations, some- 
times exhibits remarkable subtlety and acuteness of mind. 
Mr. Mackenzie Wallace, who had an opportunity of perus- 
ing some of these pamphlets written by these self-taught 
moujiks, says that they were not inferior to the disserta- 
tions of the trained schoolmen of the Middle Ages. 

Such an amount of intellectual life must have appeared 



THE RASCOL. 291 

exuberant when compared with the dead stagnation in 
which the orthodax peasantry lived. 

" Orthodox peasants," says T. Aksacoff, " endowed with 
spiritual gifts and anxious to exercise thera in some intel- 
lectual pursuit, indifferent to orthodoxy and suspicious of 
the clergy and the Government, generally went over to the 
Rascol, where they found the society of men who were, in 
a certain sense, highly cultured, libraries, readers, publish- 
ers, copyists, and every aid to a free interchange of thought 
and opinion." 

Thus did the Rascol become the embodiment of a kind 
of moujik culture entirely different to, and perfectly inde- 
pendent of, that of the upper, or Europeanized, Russians. 
The Rascolniks knew no foreign language, and for a long 
time shunned even Russian literature, because they consid- 
ered the secular alphabet introduced by Peter the Great to 
be heretical. They taught their children only the Slavonic 
alphabet, in which the Scriptures were printed. They lived, 
isolated by their religious prejudice, as completely apart 
from the world outside as if they were surrounded by im- 
passable deserts. Still they formed among themselves a 
nation of more than ten millions of men, in active intellect- 
ual interchange of thought. They could not relapse into 
utter stagnation. 

Rascolnik culture offers, indeed, unmistakable signs of 
progress in its particular domain. With the small intel- 
lectual capital they possessed, the actual progress was neces- 
sarily a very modest one, being confined to religious mat- 
ters. Still, it is even now not devoid of interest, because 
so perfectly independent of any exterior influence, and en- 
tirely evolved from its own scanty materials. 

The Bible (the ancient unrevised edition, of course), with 
a few ecclesiastical books, some old translations from the 
Greek, formed the only intellectual food of the Rascol up 
to recent times. 



292 THE KUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

The first steps of the Rascol were exceedingly slow. For 
seventy years it floundered in the slough of ritualism from 
which it had started. The Fedoseevzy doctrine, mention- 
ed in a former chapter, is an illustration of this. People 
caused discord and quarrelled, and excommunicated one 
another for differences in the mere detail of exterior wor- 
ship. One denomination, for instance, seceded upon the 
question of the folding brass ikons, which they considered 
heretical, admitting as correct only those that were solid 
and formed from one piece of metal or wood. 

From the middle of the eighteenth century onward, 
questions of broader interest have been mixed up with those 
of ancient ritualism. The '^priestless" take the lead in this 
movement, bringing the burning question of marriage, the 
stumbling-block of the sect, to the front. 

The "priestless" — those who refused to accept the run- 
away orthodox pops as ministers — had a hard course to 
pursue. Strict observers of all the traditions and canons 
of the orthodox Church, they could perform for themselves 
only such rites as simple laymen are allowed to celebrate — 
i,€., baptize, hear confessions, and read certain parts of the 
mass. They could hold no communion service, and what 
was in practice more difficult to avoid, no marriage cer- 
emony. According to the canons of the orthodox Church, 
only ordained clergymen can perform this ceremony. No 
clergy meant no wedlock. Monastic celibacy was imposed 
on all the adherents of the ''priestless" Rascol as the only 
state free from sin and fitting a Christian. 

The leaders of the "priestless" Rascol tried hard to en- 
force this prescription both by preaching and by example. 
All their settlements were orio-inallv intended to be monas- 
teries. The numbers of the faithful, however, of both 
sexes made the realization of this intention exceedingly 
difficult. At the Wyg settlement — that beacon of the True 
Faith — the men and women were rigorously kept apart. 



THE RASCOL. 293 

They were lodged in two different groups of houses, and 
they never met in common rooms. In the chapel during 
the service each sex stood in a place especially assigned to 
it, and separated from the other by a double curtain of 
mats. Even the whole length of the passage which led 
from the women's lodgings to the door of the chapel was 
lined with mats, so as to render the fair sex invisible to the 
other. Private interviews were strictly prohibited. Rela- 
tives and fellow-villagers were allowed to meet in a com- 
mon hall under the eyes of six elderly sisters of no less 
than sixty years of age, carefully chosen for this office by 
the elder or abbot of the Wygorezie. 

Needless to say that all these precautions proved of no 
avail against nature. The number of transgressors was so 
great that it was impossible to deal harshly with them. 
They were excommunicated for a period, and had some 
penance imposed on them, after which they were readmit- 
ted into the Church, and as a rule, after an interval had 
to undergo the same punishment a second time, by way of 
expiation and purification. 

When the once small colony had increased to many thou- 
sands of souls, mostly husbandmen, whose scattered farms 
covered vast tracts of land won by their labor from marshes 
and brushwood, the separation of the sexes became quite 
impracticable. A moujik cannot cultivate his land with- 
out the constant assistance of his baba, to perform all the 
household work, to cook his dinner, and mind the cattle. 
The inhabitants of Pomorie, as the whole of the Rascolnik 
territory was called, naturally fell into two different classes 
— the monks, who inhabited the centres of the settlement, 
such as the Wyg monastery, and formed some other minor 
religious societies and chapels ; and the laymen, who lived 
scattered in small villages all around in regular peasant 
households with their unwedded wives. They could con- 
done the contraction of these unauthorized unions by the 



294 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

performance of a penance, whicli varied in severity accord- 
ing to the austerity or mildness of the elected readers or 
informal presbyters of their respective congregations. 

These anomalous conditions could not fail to give twinges 
of conscience to the Eascolniks, but from the point of view of 
strict ritualism they had no choice ; what they considered a 
transgression against morality was a venial sin when compared 
with a breach of the sacred ordinances of the Church. 

About the middle of the eighteenth century the ques- 
tion of marriage began to be treated from another point of 
view. In 1750 a very popular writer of the Pomorzy sect, 
Anikin, boldly approached the essential question of w^ed- 
lock, maintaininof that marriao^e is a sacred institution be- 
fore God, independently of the priest's benediction and the 
Church ceremony. 

His treatise made a great sensation, and excited a good 
deal of discussion. Among his followers was Basili Emel- 
ianov, the elder of the Moscow Pomorzy, who began to 
perform a sort of marriage ceremony in his chapel. This 
produced a scandal among his fellow-worshippers. Tlie 
abbot of the Wyg monastery, Archip Dementiev, the head 
of the whole Pomorzy sect, was strongly opposed to this 
innovation. A council was summoned, Emelianov was ex- 
communicated, and, being a rather weak man, submitted 
and made a hypocritical recantation. His case was, how- 
ever, taken up by several popular writers and debaters of 
the sect, such as Krilov, Paul the Curious, Skachkov, and 
others. They advanced the thesis — very sweeping for the 
Rascol — that in the absence of a clergyman laymen can, 
by appointment of the Church, perform certain rites proper 
to the ordained clergy. The Pomorzy Church became 
divided within itself. The Abbot of Wygorezie, Archip 
Dementiev, Grigory Ivanovitch, author of more than twenty 
works on various subjects, and Dolgy, a merchant, wrote 
and preached vehemently against those who married. 



THE RASCOL. 295 

The times were, however, ripe for a change, and the advo- 
cates of marriage gradually gained ground. Several of the 
former opponents of marriage passed over to the opposite 
side. In 1795, Archip Dementiev, the abbot, made the dec- 
laration that, " fearing God, he does not consider Emelianov 
a heretic, nor the couples united by him adulterers." 

After Emelianov's death his successor, Habriel Skachkov, 
w^ent to AVygorezie, whence he returned in 1798 to Mos- 
cow, with a declaration, signed by the united Pomorzy sects, 
to the effect that " marriaoje does not consist in the Church 
ceremony, which may or may not be performed, but in the 
eternal vows of the raarried couple." This was an impor- 
tant victory, and a marked proof of the broadening out of 
the Rascolnik mind. Religion had ceased for them to be a 
mere rite — it had become a principle of conduct. 

When the Pomorzy tried to bring the other great sect, 
the Fedoseevzy, over to their views, they met, however, with 
fierce opposition. Kovylin brutally pushed the ancient 
principle (of the rite above all things) to its logical conclu- 
sion, as follows : 

"Better to live as a Turk than to marry ; better to have 
ten illegitimate children than one wedded husband." His 
followers made a picture, in which a wedded couple were 
represented, and the devil with a poker putting the soul 
into the body of the baby. 

The example, nevertheless, spread among the Fedoseevzy 
too. The St. Petersburg elder of the sect began to unite 
some of his parishioners in matrimony. He was excom- 
municated. The St. Petersburg Fedoseevzy split off into 
two parties, and instituted a new persuasion, that of the 
Speshnevo. 

In 1876 the Government gave countenance to this move- 
ment by recognizing the legality, in the eyes of the law, of 
the marriages registered in Rascolnik chapels. 

Having thus settled, according to the light of their indi- 



296 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

vidual reason and conscience, one important question, that 
of matrimony, the " priestless " practically stepped out of 
the bonds of the Rascol. In thus admitting the Protestant 
principle of freedom of interpretation, in one question, they 
opened the way to its further conquests. 

This nineteenth century, especially the last twenty-five 
years, has been a period of very rapid progress towards 
rationalism in religion among former Rascolniks. 

Ten years before the Emancipation a teacher belonging 
to the Wanderers, Nicolas Kiseleff, wrote against the spirit 
of obtuse conservatism which characterized the Rascol, advo- 
cating the very opposite ideas of progress in religion : " You 
call yourselves * Old Believers,' and * worshippers of old rites,' 
and you are proud of these names, though they are against 
the very spirit of Christianity. The Christian creed has 
nothing old in it, but ever grows younger and fresher, and 
for the believers in Christ there can be no other name than 
Christians." 

These new ideas produced a great stir in the Rascolnik 
world, and Kiseleff found many sympathizers and adher- 
ents. 

Another writer, a learned Rascolnik monk, Paul, in his 
book, " The King's Way," which had a very great sale, 
rejected the authority of some of the canonized Fathers of 
the Church. In another work of his he attacks the prin- 
ciple of an ecclesiastical hierarchy, proving on historical 
grounds that before Nicon's time, and up to 1685, there 
were in the Pskov bishopric one hundred and sixty parishes 
in the hands of the peasants, who appointed presbyters 
without their having been ordained by the bishop. 

Many prominent Rascolnik teachers attacked various 
other important dogmas of the orthodox Church. One 
man, Efira Blokhin, who wrote in 1840, rejected all the 
sacraments; others accepted Baptism but rejected the Eu- 
charist, on the authority of St. John and St. Augustine, who 



THE RASCOL. 297 

said, " Believe, and thou hast eaten and hast partaken of 
the Eucharist." Very many reject three or four of the less 
important sacraments peculiar to the Greek Church, 

The leading spirits of the Rascol have long since relin- 
quished the petty ritualistic hobbies of their forefathers. 
The questions as to crossing with two or with three fingers, 
or of the Greek versus the Latin form of the cross, are re- 
placed by questions as to the binding force of the letter of 
Scripture, the amount of freedom of interpretation permis- 
sible, the authenticity of certain prophecies in the Old Tes- 
tament, the reality of the miracles in the New. 

A vast intellectual work of transformation is evidently in 
progress within the old Rascol, of which the writings just 
mentioned are a symptom and an instrument. A noticeable 
change has been wrought during the last two generations in 
the spirit of our ritualistic dissent. The respective positions 
of the orthodox and the Rascolniks have been completely 
reversed. Fifty years ago the orthodox reproached the Ras- 
colniks with their narrowness, and their slavish adherence 
to the letter, to the neglect of the spirit of religious doc- 
trines. Now the Rascolniks levy the same reproaches against 
the orthodox, whom they call " Ritualists of the Church Hi- 
erarchy." To use the pertinent expression of I. Aksakoff, 
the Rascolniks think that " the so-called orthodox creed is 
a perfunctory oflScial one, which does not spring from the 
living faith of those who profess it, and which serves mere- 
ly as one of the instruments used by the Government for 
the maintenance of order." 

With the Rascolniks the tendency to disregard exterior 
formalities, and to seek after the ** inner sense " of the 
Scriptures, constantly gains ground. The Scriptures must 
be understood according to the spirit, and not according to 
the letter. This transformation has already spread very far 
among the " priestless." Their main body can be said to 
have given up the Rascol as a ritual altogether. The Po- 



298 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

povzy are much slower to move, and stick tenaciously to 
the antiquated creed of their forefathers. 

There exist a number of sects, founded during the last 
twenty or thirty years, in which the most advanced ration- 
alistic theories of the Rascol are embodied. Such are the 
Nemoliaki (Non-prayers), founded in 1835-37 by Zimin, 
a Cossack of the Don, and now widely spread among the 
Rascolniks in Siberia, Perm, Moscow, Odessa, and Nijni 
Novgorod ; the Vozdykhanzy (the Sighers), who appeared 
about twelve years ago in the province of Kaluga, and af- 
terwards spread into the neighboring provinces; the Kali- 
kovzy of the province of Tchernigov ; the several new ram- 
ifications of the Yaroslav Beguny, and many others. These 
sects are the only ones which have latterly had any consid- 
erable success within the Rascol. All are more or less 
rationalistic ; they reject the sacraments (sometimes all of 
them, but occasionally making exceptions in favor of Bap- 
tism and the Eucharist), the Church Hierarchy, the ikons, 
and the saints, also the worship of relics and temple wor- 
ship. All bear traces, however, of their Rascolnik origin, 
for they always contain something about Nicon as Anti- 
christ, either in the fantastic views set forth as to the his- 
tory of the world or in some other peculiar tenets. 

All these are pregnant signs. Vast communities, com- 
posed of from twelve to fifteen millions of men, everywhere 
present the widest intellectual differences. While the more 
advanced elements of the Rascol have ceased to be Rascol- 
niks at all, among the most backward we hear now and 
again of isolated cases of self-immolation. But the pains- 
taking investigators of the modern Rascol have brought to 
light sufficient proof of the vastness and intensity of relig- 
ious rationalism in the leading body of the Rascol to show 
unmistakably in what direction it is moving. 

The orthodox Church has been quite right in assert 
ing that the Rascol cannot stand the progress of time and 



THE RASCOL. 299 

culture. The great ritualistic scliisra is mightily shaken, 
and as such its years are numbered. But the Church was 
wrong to suppose that when their eyes should be opened to 
the narrowness of their doctrine the people would return to 
the bosom of the mother-church. What we may expect, 
with a good deal of certainty, is that they will reverse their 
tactics and attack it from the opposite side. 

Before passing on to the consideration of purely ration- 
alistic dissent, unmixed and unconnected with the Rascoi 
proper, we must say a few words about one strange sect of 
which we hav^e heard pretty often of late. It is the so- 
called sect of the Ne Nashy, or the ** Negators." It is not 
exactly a "sect," as they are avowed freethinkers, denying 
everything in religion. Nevertheless, they exhibit a fierce 
fanaticism in their negation, and to this we are unaccus- 
tomed in connection with the sobering influences of scien- 
tific thought. These popular freethinkers have been met 
and observed by educated people in several prisons. H. 
Lopatin described in the V'period several of those detained 
in the Irkutsk prison. Mishia, an official in the civil serv- 
ice, had an opportunity of studying them in one of the 
prisons of Western Siberia, W. Korolenko, our talented 
young writer, when on his way to Siberia met one of them 
in Perm prison. They are said to be very numerous in the 
province of Saratov. 

All accounts agree in representing these peo{)le as un- 
flinching, fierce rebels, denying all authority, whether divine 
or human, bearing, and often provoking, the most appalling 
punishments, rather than show any sign of submission or 
deference to their jailers or any other men in authority. 

It would be an honor to us to call them popular Nihilists, 
were they not imbued at the same time with a sort of wor- 
ship of individual selfishness, and with gloomy pessimistic 
views as regards all things human. It is difficult to com- 



300 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

preliend what good purpose is served by all the frightful 
sufferings they bring down on their own heads by wilful, 
sometimes wanton, insults and roughness. It seems as 
though they enjoyed suffering on some incomprehensible 
psychological grounds of their own. Mishla describes a 
mild type of these popular freethinkers, a certain Nicolas 
Tchukhmishov, who did not refuse to work in the prison, 
who answered all questions as to his name and origin when 
asked by the prison authorities, and who did not worry 
them much in any other fashion, as his companions were 
wont to do. He was accordingly treated with mildness by 
the jailers, who w^re glad to overlook as " crotchets " his 
habit of wearing his hat in their presence, and using rather 
free language towards his superiors, etc. But suddenly, 
when the new governor of the province, who is as absolute 
a monarch in Siberia as a Turkish pacha, came to visit the 
prison, Nicolas Tchukhmishov publicly abused him in most 
opprobrious terms, though quite unprovoked. He was in- 
stantly condemned to be flogged. The next day, when the 
sentence had to be carried out, he assaulted the ispravnik 
and overthrew the zerzalo^ a sort of fetich intended to rep- 
resent the Emperor, for which offences the infuriated is- 
pravnik had him flogged almost to death. When Mishla, 
with whom he w^as on friendly terms, paid him a visit at the 
hospital, and asked him for what reason he had done all 
this, Tchukhmishov quietly answered, " I had to do it ; it 
was necessary," and offered no further explanation. 

There is something which recalls the early self-immola- 
tors of the Rascolnik in these strange yearnings after mar- 
tyrdom. A. Prugavin names, as the founder of this ** sect," 
a certain Vasily Shyshkov, a peasant from the province of 
Saratov, sentenced to exile in Siberia for his religious opin- 
ions. He was by birth a member of the Fedoseevzy, but 
not being satisfied with it he changed. Four times he al- 
tered his creed, and in the mean time was thrice rebaptized. 



THE EASCOL. 301 

None of the churches satisfied him, so he began to study the 
Scriptures for himself, with the hope of finding his own 
way to God. Instead of finding peace, however, he was 
struck by the contradictions contained in the Scriptures, 
and after great inward struggle and anguish he ended by 
abjuring the Scriptures, religion, God, and the future life. 
To the question, " How was the world created ?" lie an- 
swered, that " it had never been created at all, but had ex- 
isted from all time.'' As to the immortality of the soul, 
he taught that the mind and the body of man are perpetu- 
ated in his children ; all else perishes absolutely. 

This negative sect appears under two other names — the 
Netovzy^ or " Deniers," and probably also the Molchalnihjj 
or the "Dumb" — the same whom a governor of Western 
Siberia has again and again put to regular torture for the 
fun of verifying whether it would be possible for them not 
to utter a sound during the frightful ordeal. 

It is not necessary to relegate all these negative sects to 
one common source. Most probably they sprang up spo- 
radically here and there ; but from its general character it 
is easy to infer that this form of free thought grew on the 
religious hot-bed of the Rascol, independently of the influ- 
ence of the positive sciences. 



MTIONALISTIG DISSENT. 



CHAPTER I. 

Russian rationalism is of very ancient date. The great 
Protestant movement which began to agitate the whole 
Christian world in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, 
and which culminated in the Reformation, had its feeble 
echoes even in far-distant and secluded Muscovy. 

The new influence first became manifest in the northern 
commercial republics, which were more advanced in their 
culture and less prejudiced against foreigners. As early as 
1370 we read that in the town of Pskov there was a sect 
founded by a dean named Nikita, and a certain Karp, prob- 
ably by profession a barber, at any rate so his surname of 
Strigolnik seems to indicate. The doctrine of the Strigol- 
niks, or " barbers," as they w^ere dubbed by the orthodox, 
was that of a rudimentary rationalism. They rejected the 
priesthood and the sacraments ; they taught the people that 
they ought not to receive either Baptism or the Eucharist 
at the hands of the priests. According to them, people 
could confess without the assistance of a clergyman ; the 
penitents had only to prostrate themselves on the ground 
and whisper their sins to mother earth. Some of the ad- 
herents of the sect even went so far, it is said, as to reject 
the infallibility of the Scriptures, the doctrine of the im- 
mortality of the soul, and resurrection of the dead. 

The Strigolniks led a very severe ascetic life, devoted to 



B ATlONALISTiC DISSENT. 303 

fasting and prayers. They mixed little with their orthodox 
fellow-citizens, and are said to have been very proud, stiff, 
and unsociable. This, if we are to believe the statements 
of their opponents, was the chief cause of the odium in 
which they were held by the people of Pskov and of Nov- 
gorod. The sect had but a short existence, and was de- 
stroyed without the intervention of the authorities. The 
people of Pskov expelled theni from the town, and a few 
years later they migrated to Novgorod, where the crowd 
laid hands on them and threw them from the Volchov 
bridge into the river. 

A hundred years later, in the same town of Novgorod, 
there appeared an heretical rationalistic sect of much wider 
influence and importance — the so-called Judaisers, This 
sect was founded about 1470-80 by a Jewish scholar, 
named Skhary, or Zacharia. He had come to Novgorod 
from Lithuania in the ^uite of Alexander Olelkovitch, the 
last prince of free Novgorod. Skhary, whom the chroni- 
clers mention as a man of great learning and acute intellect, 
took up his abode in Novgorod, and began an active propa- 
ganda among the most advanced theologians of the Chris- 
tian Church. He attacked the dogma of the Trinity, the 
doctrine of the Redemption, the sacraments, the worship of 
the ikons, and the worship of the saints, on logical grounds. 
He furthermore strongly objected to monastic celibacy as 
contrary to human nature. 

All this was new and attractive to the Novgorod divines, 
who had hitherto had to exercise their minds on mere for- 
malities. The first disciples who joined this Jewish scholar 
were two prominent clergymen, Alexy and Dionisy, and 
soon afterwards Gabriel, the Dean of Novgorod Cathedral. 
The more educated among the laymen soon followed their 
example, attracted by the clear logic and the simple and 
comprehensible ethics which the new sect carefully elab- 
orated. 



304 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTItY. 

In 1486 the Czar, John III., paid a visit to Novgorod, 
and made the acquaintance of the two chiefs of the sect, 
the pops Alexy and Dionisy, and on returning to Moscow 
took both of them with him to his capital. The sect spread 
very rapidly at the Court of Moscow and among a group of 
the clergy. Some, too, of the most influential olBScials, and 
even members of the Czar's own family, were in its favor. 
In ten years the sect had spread over the chief towns of 
the Empire. 

In 1489 they obtained the nomination of Zossima, their 
secret adherent, to the headship of the Muscovite Church, 
a thing which no sect had ever before succeeded in doing. 
The Czar himself lent a favorable ear to their teachings, but 
they had no root among the masses, so that the members of 
the orthodox Church, when roused from indifference by the 
passionate appeal of Hennady, obtained an easy and com- 
plete victory over them. The council, convened at Ilenna- 
dy's instigation, condemned the Judaisers as heretics, and 
deposed the metropolitan. Zossima was permitted, by ex- 
ceptional leniency on the part of the Czar, to end his days 
unmolested in a monastery. Some of the minor lights of 
the sect were delivered over to the tribunals and executed. 
The remainder dispersed, and the whilom powerful sect 
vanished, we may safely say without leaving a trace behind. 
There exists, it is true, among the many popular sects of 
to-day a body of Sabbatarians which in some of its subdi- 
visiens reproduces the doctrines of the early Judaisers. It 
would, however, be perfectly absurd to suppose them con- 
nected by some mysterious links of heredity with a sect 
which existed only three hundred years before. The Epis- 
tles and the Acts show so many unmistakable proofs of the 
Judaizing tendencies of some of the founders of Christianity 
that they offer a perfectly satisfactory explanation of the 
spontaneous development of Judaizing sects in Russia as 
well as in other countries. 



RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 305 

The following generation offers another, but much more 
feeble manifestation of the same rationalistic tendencies, 
founded this time on a purel}' Christian basis. This move- 
ment is generally connected with the literary activity of a 
remarkable man, Maxim the Greek, an Albanian scholar, 
who succeeded in grafting upon the country of his adop- 
tion some elements of the vigorous European culture of his 
day. 

Maxim the Greek studied in Paris, Venice, and Florence. 
He was a contemporary and a warm admirer of Girolamo 
Savonarola. When summoned to Moscow, he could not 
help criticising the wooden formalism and narrowness of 
Russian religion. 

There was nothing adverse to orthodoxy in the teachings 
of Maxim the Greek, though he was accused of ** heresy" 
and condemned to life-long imprisonment. In his numer- 
ous writings and speeches he merely tried to persuade the 
Russians to give a little thought to their religion — which 
was a great and dangerous service in that benighted epoch. 

Prince Kourboky tells us that at that time the orthodox 
priests themselves tried to damp the ardor of such young 
people as were lovers of book-lore and religious study. "Do 
not read many books," they said ; " the source of all sin is 
reasoning ; it is like the second fall. You have, forsooth, 
acquired superior wisdom, when lo ! you stop to reason on 
some text ; and behold ! you have fallen into some heresy." 
Matvey Semenovitch Bashkin, condemned in 1555 for her- 
esy, and probably burned alive — a vague but very touching 
figure — was probably one of those young people in whom 
such advice and warning were powerless to still the longing 
after light and truth. 

During the Lent of 1554, Simeon, the pop of the Cathe- 
dral of the Annunciation, was approached by a stranger, 
who asked to be confessed. It was a well-to-do nobleman, 
Matvey Bashkin. At the confession, the penitent asked the 
20 



306 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

pop questions as to the moral obligations and religious du- 
ties of men whicli appeared " awkward " to the pop Simeon. 
Bashkin show^ed him a book of Epistles full of marks, in- 
dicating those texts which had struck the reader most ; he 
asked Simeon to explain some of these texts to him ; but 
the pop not being a man of large resource, Bashkin offered 
his own explanations. 

"Look," he said, once, pointing to the gospel; "is it 
not written, * For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even 
in this ; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself V and yet 
people all around us do nothing but torment one another. 
Christ ordered us to live like brothers, and we, being Chris- 
tians, hold other Christians in bondage. I, thank God, have 
torn the kabalas I had on my men into pieces. Those who 
live on my estates do so of their own free-will, and not be- 
cause of my rights as a certificated slave-owner. If they 
are satisfied with me they remain, if not they are free to go 
whenever they like. You who are our spiritual fathers, you 
ought to visit us laymen oftener, and to teach us how to 
live, and how to do our duty towards the people who are 
subjected to us." 

This inquiring tone of mind and these ideas revealed a 
different spirit from that which then prevailed in the Mus- 
covite Church. Pop Simeon was hurt, and denounced Bash- 
kin, whose doctrine he termed " a debauchery." Bashkin 
was arrested and tried by the council in the following year, 
together with a small group of friends, among them some 
of the most educated and advanced of the clergy. When 
questioned, Bashkin summed up the theological part of his 
doctrine thus : " We reject the sacraments, the traditions 
of the Church, the worship of the saints, and their ikons. 
By * the Church' we understand a congregation of believ- 
ers, and not a human institution, still less a mere building 
of stones." 

To these doctrines, which reflected the Protestantism of 



RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 307 

the West, Baslikin is supposed to have united the views of 
the Arians. " We do not recognize," he went on to say, 
" the divinity of the Son, nor His equality with the Father." 
It is difficult to determine what, in this profession of faith, 
represented the real views of the Russian latitudinarians of 
the sixteenth century, and which were put into their mouths 
by the inquisitors. The very fact that Bashkin went to 
confession to a pop speaks against his rejection of the sac- 
raments, though this may perhaps have been the mere de- 
vice of a propagandist to enter into communication with 
a man whom he expected to convert to his views. At all 
events, the general rationalistic character of Bashkin's her- 
esy cannot be doubted. 

Bashkin's ultimate fate is a matter of uncertainty. Pop- 
ular tradition says that he was burned at the stake, though 
there is no mention of him in the official records. Popular 
rationalists of modern times look reverently upon Bashkin 
as the founder of their creed, though of course this title 
must be accepted only as an honorary one. 

As another symptom of the fermentation going on in 
men's minds, we may also mention another interesting here- 
siarch — Theodosius the Squint-eyed, whose heresy was dis- 
covered at about the same time as Bashkin's, but, accord- 
ing to Kostomarov, was not directly connected with it. 
Theodosius, or Fedosy, the Squint-eyed, was the first genu- 
ine self-taught moujik who, owing to his superior intelli- 
gence, appears at the head of a sect. He was a serf on 
some nobleman's estate on the river Volga. He contrived 
to escape from his master, and for some years wandered as 
a vagabond under assumed names, till he found refuge, as 
so many of his fellow-vagabonds had done before him, in 
Baloosero, one of the northern monasteries. Here he be- 
gan to preach, and converted several of the brethren and 
some of the lavmen of the neijxhborhood. Accordins^ to an 
account which some of his followers gave to a friend of 



308 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

theirs, Fedosy appears to have been a very bold thinker and 
a fine dialectician. He knew the Bible thoroughly, and was 
as skilful in the art of discovering heaps of texts in support 
of his opinions as the best of the Rascolnik's *' readers '* of 
more recent date. In many points the doctrine of Fedosy 
reminds us of that of Bashkin, though he went much farther. 
In his striving after a stricter monotheism, he rejected the 
divinity of the Son and His equality with the Father. 

" How dared they," he was wont to ask, " insert in the 
Creed, in reference to Jesus, the words * begotten, not made,' 
when the Apostle Peter had said that God created Jesus ? 
He did not say * begot,' but created. And the Apostle Paul 
likewise says : '^ There is one God and one mediator be- 
tween God and men, the man Christ Jesus.' " 

Quoting numerous passages from the Pentateuch, the 
Psalms, the Proverbs of Solomon, and the Prophets, Fedosy 
stigmatized ikon-worship as idolatry, and called the churches 
"idol shrines," and the pops "idol priests." He rejected 
the sacraments and the external rites of the Church, and 
showed a great respect for the books of Moses, which he 
called "fundamental ones." He admitted men's freedom 
to question even the authenticity of the Scriptures, reject- 
ing, for instance, as unauthenti^c the Epistle of St. Paul to 
the Hebrews, which he attributed to some other man of the 
same name. 

He differed from the Christians inasmuch as he denied 
the immortality of the soul, as well as the doctrine of the 
Redemption and of the fall of man. He taught that man 
was created mortal, as were all other living creatures. 
"Why should death mean something exceptional to man?" 
he asked. "The bio; fishes of the sea and the whales and 
serpents, the birds of the air and the beasts, the lions and 
elephants, who are the biggest creatures on the earth, all 
have to die, and nothing is left of them after death. All 
these are like men, creations of God." 



RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 309 

Against the doctrine of the Redemption he urged that 
human nature had undergone no change since the coming 
of Christ : *^ Men are as liable now as they were before to 
infirmities, death, and sin." 

Fedosy the Squint-eyed, with one of his chief disciples, 
had the good-luck to escape from the Moscow prison, thus 
avoiding the otherwise inevitable execution. He and his 
friend took refuge in Lithuania, where their propaganda is 
said to have met with great success. 

Such were the most important of the early manifesta- 
tions of religious rationalism in Russia. They are so ex- 
ceedingly feeble, these dying echoes of the far-distant thun- 
der, that but for the dead silence of everything around it 
would be difficult to catch the sound at all. 

The real harbingers of rationalism, who carried its stand- 
ard through the cold blasts of time and the blows of per- 
Bccution, are two popular sects — the Dukhoborzy, or " Cham-, 
pions of the Spirit," and the MoloJcane, or " Milk-eaters." 



CHAPTER II. 

The Dukhoborzy and Molokane are of the same extrac- 
tion, and the exterior forms of their worship are pretty 
much the same. For a long time they were confounded. 
Closer observation showed, however, a considerable differ- 
ence betw^een the Molokane, who are strict Christians of the 
Protestant type, and the Dukhoborzy, who have developed 
a sort of theosophy differing in some essentials from ortho- 
dox Christianity. It was generally thought that the more 
moderate and much more numerous Molokane was the elder 
of the two sects. The Dukhoborzy were supposed to be an 
offshoot, generated as usual by a more extreme minority. 
This view has been adopted by Baron Haxthausen and 
other foreign writers. Modern investigations have, however, 
proved the contrary to be the case. The Molokane seceded 
from the Dukhoborzy during the last quarter of the eigh- 
teenth century, and the Dukhoborzy is much the elder. 

Nothing can be said with certainty about the origin of 
this sect, but the doctrines of the Dukhoborzy are so ex- 
tremely complicated, and contain such strange ideas, that it 
is particularly unlikely that they should have been developed 
at one stroke on orthodox soil, without some previous work 
in the realm of thought having been expended in religious 
matters. Very probably we see in the Dukhoborzy and 
Molokane the two last links of a long series of transforma- 
tions and religious efforts of the popular mind — links in a 
chain which it is impossible for us to review for lack of any 
written record. 

Absorbed by the struggle with the powerful Rascol, the 



RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 311 

Government disregarded the small body of rationalist dis- 
senters, sometimes even confounding them with the extreme 
sect of ritualistic dissent. When the Dukhoborzy were first 
discovered in 1750-55 by the Imperial police, it was as a 
numerous and fully organized body, with ramifications in 
four provinces of the Empire. At their examination the 
Dukhoborzy of the village of Okhochee (province of Khar- 
kov) made a deposition in which some scholars thought to 
find a cue to the origin of the sect. On being asked by 
the police who taught them their criminal faith, the pris- 
oners answered that they had learned it of a foreigner, a 
military man, who had stayed for many years among them 
and went away again, nobody knowing whither. 

No particulars were given as to the nationality, the name, 
or the creed of this foreigner. In comparing dates it was 
conjectured that he must have been a prisoner of war taken 
during the seven years' campaign. As, after a superficial 
examination, the tenets of the Dukhoborzy were thought to 
be much the same as those of the Quakers, it was concluded 
that the mysterious stranger must have been a member of 
the Society of Friends. 

This legend made the turn of the world and led to some 
curious disappointments. Whether it has some historical 
basis or not it is difficult to decide. A stranger who had 
learned Russian and took an interest in popular religion 
may have lived in those parts, or he may never have existed 
at all, and the whole story about him be a fabrication of 
the accused Dukhoborzy in order to stave oE the annoy- 
ances caused by the police. The inner evidences of the 
Dukhoborzy doctrines make foreign influence very probable, 
but we must look for their sources rather to the East, or to 
the old Christian heresies, than to modern Protestantism, 
and to an epoch in all probability much anterior to the 
seven years' war. 

The base of the Dukhoborzys' creed is their conception 



312 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY, 

of the Deity as the Soul of the World, the reasoning prin- 
ciple of the universe ; not as a personal being, superior to 
and independent of the world. 

"The Dukhoborzy," says the orthodox Interlocutor of 
1859, "believe that God does not exist as a separate per- 
sonal being. The Deity, according to them, dwells in the 
souls of men, inseparable and indistinguishable from them, 
and unable to reveal its substance and glory otherwise than 
through them." The Dukhoborzy accordingly consider the 
soul of man to be a faithful image of God. With the above- 
named restrictions, the Dukhoborzy accept the dogma of 
the Trinity of the Godhead, and see it reproduced in the 
spiritual capacities of man — God the Father is the Mem- 
ory; God the Son is the Reason; God the Spirit is the 
Will. 

They also accept the whole of the Scriptures, but in the 
spirit of symbolic individualization. According to them 
the whole of the New and the Old Testaments merely pre- 
figure in some spiritual way the mysteries which are accom- 
plished in the soul of every faithful man. 

The " Inner Word," or " Speculating Reason," which is 
identical with " God the Son," performs, in a spiritual sense, 
the office of redemption in the soul of every faithful hu- 
man being ; here it has its spiritual birth, here it preaches, 
works miracles, suffers, and brings to life — as Christ did on 
earth. 

The fall of Adam is likewise merely a symbolization of 
what is daily performed in the souls of men. The Dukho- 
borzy accept it as an historical event, but they deny the 
degenerating influence of the fall of the first man on all 
his descendants. Adam's fall was his individual fall, a 
source of misfortune and deterioration for his soul alone. 
They reject, therefore, the dogma of redemption and of in- 
carnation. " We believe that Christ was only a good man," 
they said to Allan and Grilet, two English clergymen who 



RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 313 

came over to inquire whether the Dukhoborzy were really 
Russian Quakers, as it had been rumored. 

The Inner Word — the revelation of God in the soul of 
man — is the supreme authority in religious questions, and 
the source of all wisdom. The totality of that wisdom, 
possessed by the whole Church, is what the Dukhoborzy 
understand to be the "Book of Life." This "Book" is 
traced out practically by a vast number of religious hymns, 
meditations, precepts, and commentaries, of which every 
Dukhoborzy tries to retain in his memory as much as he 
can, that he may transmit it through oral tuition to his 
children. The share of this sacred knowledge enjoyed by 
each individual man is small, but the Dukhoborzy believe 
that the religious truth possessed by their Church as a 
whole is superior to that recorded in any of the Scriptures. 
" Ask our old people," they say ; " they will teach you 
better." 

The Dukhoborzy proudly consider themselves as the only 
true worshippers of God, and consider that the rest of man- 
kind is wallowing in superstition and idolatry. They show, 
however, a remarkable and quite exceptional liberality of 
mind in determining who are to be considered as the true 
Dukhoborzy — champions of the spirit. 

According to them the Church is the congregation of 
those whom God Himself has called from among the worldly 
and ordained to walk in the path of light. These chosen 
ones are not recognizable by any peculiar sign, nor are they 
associated with any outward religion. They form an invis- 
ible Church, whose members are scattered all over the world 
and recognize the authority of many religions. 

Thus there are people belonging to this Church not only 
among all Christian sects, but among those who do not 
study the Scriptures and who do not know Jesus Christ. 
It includes men of all nations, all races, and all tongues. 
Even among the Jews and the Turks members of this 



314 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

Clmrcli may be found — all those who are guided by their 
" inner light," and cultivate in their souls the seed of good- 
ness."* 

The Dukhoborzy believe, in their own fashion, in the 
immortality of the soul: God, who dwells in the souls of 
men, is immortal, therefore so are the souls ; but they en- 
tirely reject the Christian conception of immortality. Ac- 
cording to them the individual immortality of a man con- 
sists " in the memory which the deceased leaves behind him 
among his fellow-men." They do not believe in either hell 
or paradise. According to them the promise of future life 
we find in the Scriptures refers to the future destinies of 
mankind on earth, and not to a life beyond the tomb in 
another world. " There will be no resurrection of the body, 
and there will be no destruction of the visible world. 
Physical nature as the abode of an eternal God will last 
forever. The difference between the present life and the 
future is this : now the faithful have to live among sinners, 
while in the future they will overcome the sinners and will 
inherit the earth alone, though people will be born, will 
work, and die just as they do now." 

Believing that souls are a part of God which cannot per- 
ish at the destruction of the bodies, the Dukhoborzy admit 
the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. Yet here we 
find a curious peculiarity in opposition to the common ver- 
sion of this doctrine. The Dukhoborzy do not suppose 
that the soul enters the body before or at the moment of 
the birth of a child. The newly born baby is only a piece 
of soulless matter.f According to the Dukhoborzy, the 
soul enters into the child's body gradually from about the 
sixth to the fifteenth year of its age — the period during 



* Novizky, 67-68, from Vestnik Europy, 1880. 
f This article of faith served as a ground for the absurd accusation 
of infanticide brought against these people by the orthodox. 



RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 315 

which the child is learning from the Book of Life, and the 
triune manifestation of the spirit — memory, reason, and will 
— are developed and shaped in it. This indicates clearly in 
what, according to the Dukhoborzy, the transmigration of 
souls consists. 

Whence have our moujiks got all these ideas? From 
India? from ancient Gnostics? Or are they the popular 
version of the views of some Western heresiarch ? Or have 
they evolved them all out of their own heads by meditating 
on the Scriptures ? 

Any and all of these surmises may be true, though not 
one has more than mere conjecture to support it. As to 
the Dukhoborzy themselves, they have no distinct tradition 
as to the origin of their creed ; or, if you like, they have, 
and a very strong one, but one which can hardly be of any 
use as an historical fact. They declare that the founders 
of their creed were the three youths whom King Nebuchad- 
nezzar ordered to be thrown into a flamino^ furnace. Some 
again go back to still earlier times for the founder of their 
Church, and believe him to have been Abel, the first inno- 
cent man slaughtered, as so many of their own prophets 
and teachers have since been. 

At all events, the formation and constant development 
of a similar doctrine among the simple, uneducated moujiks 
is a very suggestive fact, for it must be borne in mind that 
all the Dukhoborzy, both past and present, are simple mou- 
jiks, tillers of the soil, or tradesmen. ** Hitherto," says 
Haxthausen, ** none of the educated classes have been found 
among these sects. No Russian clergyman has ever gone 
over to them or become their leader ; their members are all 
ordinary Russian peasants. The more wonderful, therefore, 
is the acuteness of intellect and force of imagination which 
they manifest, and which testify to the great intellectual 
gifts that still lie dormant in the Russian common people." 

So high, indeed, was the speculative part of the Dukho- 



316 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

borzy doctrine carried that its followers often could not 
comprehend it so as to preserve its purity. The early Du- 
khoborzy, like the Jews of Moses's time, appear to have 
easily relapsed into certain lower forms of religion. They 
fell back on the worship of man, in this respect reminding 
us of the Chlists. The first of their authentic leaders 
whose name has been preserved was Silvan Kolesnikov, a 
peasant of the province of Kharkov, who died an octoge- 
narian. He is remembered as a man of wonderful elo- 
quence and power of persuasion, as well as of great prac- 
tical piety. Few men have ever contributed so much 
towards the enlargement of the Book of Life as has this 
patriarch of the pure Dukhoborzy Church. But in the 
next generation Savva Poberikhin, a peasant of the neigh- 
boring province of Tambov, played the part of a Dukho- 
borzy Aaron — only that instead of a golden calf he erected 
his own person as idol. 

Poberikhin introduced a new dogma, proclaiming the 
eternal separateness of each transmigratory soul, and the 
possibility that during its wanderings it might retain the 
memory of its former state in its new habitation. This 
dogma was really intended to serve one purpose — the dis- 
covery of the abode of the soul of Jesus since his death. 
Poberikhin thought that God revealed Himself in His whole- 
ness in Jesus, having descended upon his soul at his thirtieth 
year, choosing him before all others because the soul of 
Jesus was the most perfect and pure that ever animated a 
human body. After the death of Jesus his soul, in passing 
into the bodies of other men, had, by a special grace of 
God, always retained the remembrance of its former state. 
Every man whom it animated knew that he possessed the 
soul of Jesus. Savva Poberikhin named those whom in 
the olden times he supposed to have been the guardians of 
this precious loan. For the present he declared that the 
real Jesus was himself, and he accordingly claimed a trib- 



KATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 317 

ute of obedience and veneration suited to that high digni- 
ty. He obtained recognition, and established among the 
Dukhoborzy a sort of temporal theocracy, and surrounded 
himself with a body of zealots called *' angels of death," be- 
cause it was their duty, it is said, to punish with death those 
who resisted his orders. 

There are some indications, though these are not so well 
authenticated, of the appearance of other " Christs " of Po- 
berikhin's type, in the earlier part of this century, among 
the Dukhoborzy. 

The doctrine introduced by Poberikhin was afterwards 
rejected as contrary to the essence of the Dukhoborzy the- 
ology, and in its application repugnant to their ideas re- 
garding the social and political equality of all men as chil- 
dren and harbingers of God. 

An almost religious respect for man is the basis of all 
mutual relations with the Dukhoborzy. They deny even 
paternal authority, which is, as a rule, so much respected 
among our patriarchal population. The family ties among 
the Dukhoborzy are being based on mutual affection, never 
on the obedience due to a father. " The act of generation 
and of beinor born with them constitutes no tie of relation- 
ship," says Haxthausen, in describing the colonies of this 
sect on the Moloch naia. " The soul, the image of God, rec- 
ognizes no earthly father or mother ; the body springs from 
matter as a whole ; it is the child of the earth. With the 
body of the mother, which bore it for a time, it stands in 
no nearer relationship than does the seed Avith the plant 
from which we pluck it. It is a matter of indifference to 
the soul as to which prison, or body, it inhabits. There is 
only one father, God, who dwells in each one of us; and 
one mother, universal matter, or nature, the earth. The 
Dukhoborzy, therefore, never call their parents * father' and 
* mother,' but only 'old man' and * old woman.' In the 
same way a father calls his children not * mine,' but *ours' 



318 THE BUSSIAN PEASANTEY. 

(the commune's). The men call their wives * sisters.' 
Natural sympathies and instincts, however, are stronger than 
dogmas. Thus we have both heard and seen that the deep 
and afEectionate veneration of children for their parents, 
and the tender love of parents for their children, which are 
universal characteristics among the Russians, showed them- 
selves here likewise, in nearly every relation of family life 
among the Dukhoborzy, outward signs of relationship only 
being avoided.'' 

The only claim to authority with them is the possession 
of a greater share of the divine revelation. Occasionally 
the Dukhoborzy have bowed to some man in whom they 
have recognized exceptional spiritual gifts ; but, as a rule, 
their religion has harmonized with the popular feeling of 
democratic equality. The only permanent authority with 
the Dukhoborzy is that of the whole body of believers, the 
commune, whose collective light individuals are willing to 
recognize as being higher than their own. 

From a sect professing such theories as these, as to human 
dignity and human rights, a government which bore no oth- 
er credentials for respect and obedience than a display of 
brute force can have expected no recognition. The Dukho- 
borzy consider the subjugation of one man to another by 
brute force as equivalent to an act of sacrilege. They ac- 
cordingly denounce the present Government as an abomi- 
nation before God. 

It would be a mistake to conclude from this that the 
Dukhoborzy are practically so many revolutionists, only 
waiting for an opportunity to put their philosophical con- 
victions to the test. A religious negation and a political 
negation are two quite different things. The very elevation 
of the Dukhoborzy's theosophy, from which they draw such 
excellent conclusions, helps to divert their minds, and to 
create for them a world of their own, whither they transport 
their negations and affirmations in a perfectly innocuous and 



RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 319 

even stingless state. The sect of the Beguny, for example, 
with their narrow doctrine of Antichrist, contains far more 
of the pugnacious spirit, which would answer a direct appeal 
to rebellion. Who, however, can stand their apocalyptical 
nonsense, and who can expect to make anything out of it ? 
As for the Dukhoborzy, they are, and always have been, 
very peaceful citizens. Outbursts of fanaticism against the 
established church or the Government have been of much 
rarer occurrence among them than among the extreme sec- 
tion of the Rascol. As lonsc as the orders of the Govern- 
ment have not been in direct opposition to their creed, they 
have offered no resistance, and have scrupulously paid their 
taxes. "With them the negation of the Czar's authority 
was therefore strictly a matter of "conscience." They 
themselves offered no provocation, even by deliberate rough- 
ness of language. The Dukhoborzy, when arrested, without 
saying anything untrue, always tried to conceal their higher 
and more dangerous articles of faith from the inquisitors, 
by abstruse, ambiguous subtleties of language — a feat of 
war in which they were very skilful. Still, the police had 
no difficulty in getting scent of the kind of views held by 
the Dukhoborzy with regard to the authorities. 

This gave rise to frightful persecutions, to which they 
have been subject so late as the middle of the present cen- 
tury, when purely religious persecutions were no longer pos- 
sible. 

The penalties inflicted on the political offenders of the 
educated classes — from the Decembrists to the Nihilists — 
reflect but a faint image of what the guileless Dukhoborzy 
and their younger brothers the Molokane have had to un- 
dergo almost uninterruptedly for the space of about sixty 
years. Catherine II., very tolerant with the Rascol, perse- 
cuted the Dukhoborzy fiercely when they were first discov- 
ered, at about the close of her reign. 

Savage Paul I., on being informed that the Dukhoborzy 



320 THE EUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

denied his authority, gave orders that " all the adherents and 
members of this pernicious sect, unworthy of any clemency, 
should be banished to the Siberian mines for life, and set 
to do the hardest work, and that they should never have the 
chains removed from their hands and feet — in order that 
they who deny the supreme authority of earthly potentates, 
enthroned by the will of God, should feel sharply on their 
own bodies that there are authorities on earth established 
by God for the defence of the good, and for the terror and 
chastisement of villains like themselves.'' * 

Hundreds upon hundreds of the Dukhoborzy have been 
seized, fiercely knouted, and then sent to the mines. Some- 
times in addition they have had to undergo the barbarity 
of bodily mutilation. 

"When Paul I. was killed and Alexander I. ascended the 
throne, the Dukhoborzy enjoyed a short respite. The 
young emperor, greatly moved by the report of two sena- 
tors about the sufferings inflicted on perfectly innocent 
people, issued a tolerant ukase, and permitted the Dukho- 
borzy to establish a vast colony of their own on the river 
Molochnaia, in the province of Taurida. The second and 
reactionary half of Alexander I.'s reign again changed the 
position of the Dukhoborzy much for the worse. 

On the advent of Nicolas I., with his well-known jealousy 
of his authority, the Dukhoborzy and the Molokane entered 
into the gloomiest period of their existence. In 1826, the 
year after his accession, Nicolas I. issued a ukase that all 
the able-bodied Dukhoborzy and Molokane should be en- 
rolled in the army, and those unqualified for military service 
exiled to Siberia. 

Thus the alternatives before them were recantation or 
Siberia, or the "red hat," i.e., compulsory enrolment for 
the twenty-five years of military service — a fate which our 

* Ukase of August 28th, 1799. 



RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 321 

people had in those days ample grounds for dreading as 
much as the Siberian hulks. It was decreed, moreover, that 
the Dukhoborzy recruits should be sent to the Caucasian 
corps, then in permanent war with the Circassian tribes. 
As the Dukhoborzy (together with the Molokane) strictly 
object on religious grounds to the profession of arras, this 
was a terrible trial to them. 

They did not decline to fulfil the peaceful, every-day du- 
ties of the service, but when brought face to face with the 
enemy they threw their arms to the ground and refused to 
march or to fire. The most awful corporal punishment 
awarded under the military code could not make them 
obedient, so that after a time the commander of the Cau- 
casian army was compelled to pray the Emperor not to 
send him Dukhoborzy or Molokane, who " demoralized " 
the soldiers by their example and their propaganda; for 
wherever these sectarians appeared they at once made con- 
verts. From Siberia the governor of the Eastern Prov- 
inces, General Soulema, in 1835, reported to the Emperor 
upon the necessity of isolating the Dukhoborzy from other 
people. 

As soon as one of the Dukhoborzy appeared among them, 
were it in a prison or in a mine, or in some far-off village, 
the conversions to the sect began at once. In the Siberian 
hulks and mines the propagandism of the sect assumed such 
large proportions that an order was issued to send all the 
Dukhoborzy to one mine — that of Nerchinsk — the deadliest 
of them all. As to those condemned to deportation, they 
had to be settled among the aboriginal savages who did not 
understand Russian. In 1839 the same remedy — i.e,^ para- 
lyzing the Dukhoborzy propaganda by isolation among aliens 
— was applied on a large scale to the big Molochnaia colony. 

Profiting by a false denunciation* of the Council of the 

* Made by a police-officer to whom black-mail had been refused. 
21 



322 THE KUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

Elders, the Government ordered all the eiglit thousand Da- 
kboborzy, men, women, and cliildren, either to recant or to 
be transported to Transcaucasia. This barbarous measure 
was put into force during the years 1839-41, causing inde- 
scribable suffering, and condemning this hard-working people 
to many years of misery. 

All these severities and cruelties did not extirpate the 
sect. Rationalistic dissent, in both its forms, spread with 
particular rapidity during Nicolas I.'s time. The last five 
years of his reign show a gradual relaxation, almost cessa- 
tion, of the persecutions. The Emperor seemed tired. After 
twenty-five years' experience, the idea that the knout is not 
an efficient weapon in spiritual warfare seemed to penetrate 
even his dull brain. 

This has been proved by the researches of Mrs. Filiber, made on the 
spot in 1867, while the facts of the case were still fresh in men's minds. 



CHAPTER III. 

The doctrine of the Dukhoborzy had the deepest influ- 
ence on the development of religious thought throughout the 
whole body of our non-conformists. This sect was a kind 
of ready-made parent stem of popular philosophy, from 
which many of the extreme sects of all descriptions, the 
ritualist as well as the rationalist, had borrowed their boldest 
doctrines. The Dukhoborzy creed in its primitive form, 
however, was preserved by a comparatively small body of 
people. The Dukhoborzy proper probably now numbers 
about fifty thousand people. Their chief centres are in the 
provinces of Tambov, Ekaterinoslav, Saratov, and in Trans- 
caucasia, with a sprinkling in the central provinces, in South- 
ern Siberia, and in Transbaicalia. 

The Molokane sect was a transformation and simplifica- 
tion of the Dukhoborzy into a strictly rationalistic Christian 
sect. They have altogether dropped the superstructure of 
the Dukhoborzy's theosophy, and have developed a rational 
and comprehensive system of popular ethics. The secession 
of the Molokane took place about 1770. 

When Savva Poberikhin, whom we have already men- 
tioned, declared himself and was accepted as the Dukho- 
borzy's Christ, his son-in-law. Semen TJklein, a tailor of the 
same village, disagreed with him, and fearing his vengeance, 
left the village of Ilorki and went to preach among the 
peasants of the province of Tambov. In him the Molokane 
recognized the founder of their creed. The official records 
of the activity of Semen Uklein are scanty. It is known 
that he was arrested and kept for a time in Tambov prison. 



324 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

After his liberation he went to preach again, was arrested 
once more, knouted, and sent to Siberia. 

Nothing more was heard of him ; but the seeds he had 
scattered evidently fell on favorable ground. 

In 1802 the Molokane formed a regularly constituted 
sect, and in the Molochnaia colony requested to have their 
communes separate from those of the Dnkhoborzy. Daring- 
Nicolas I.'s reign they spread very rapidly, cropping up all 
over the western, central, and southern regions. 

It is impossible to fix the number of the Molokane with 
exactitude, owing to the absence of reliable statistics. Bu- 
shen's tables fix the number of registered Molokane and 
Dukhoborzy combined at 110,000. Deducting the Dukho- 
borzy, this would only leave about 60,000 for the Molo- 
kane. The figure is evidently too small. In the province 
of Tambov alone, according to ofiicial records, the number 
of the Molokane registered and unregistered reached, in 
1842-46, the figure of 200,000.* 

There are besides this Molokane settlements in many oth- 
er places — in the provinces of Riazan, Kherson, Ekaterino- 
slav, and all along the southern part of the Volga, for in- 
stance. 

On the whole, the Molokane cannot be compared, as far 
as numbers go, with any of the big Eascol sects. The old 
rationalistic sects absorbed only a small fraction of our pop- 
ulation — some hundreds of thousands only. The Molokane, 
however, greatly outnumber the Dukhoborzy. 

They are subdivided into Sabbatarian and non-Sabbatarian 
Molokane. But the former constitute a mere handful, five 
to six thousand all told. The bulk are non-Sabbatarian 
Christians, and present a rare uniformity in their doctrine 
and religious observances. 

We cannot give a more graphic and clear idea of this im- 

* Vestnik Europy, 1880, vi. 



RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 325 

portant sect than by quoting a few pages from the personal 
reminiscences and impressions of our historian, N. Kosto- 
marov, who has enjoyed exceptional opportunities of ob- 
serving them during the several years of his exile in Sa- 
ratov. 

" I had much difficulty," says N. Kostomarov, " in over- 
coming the excessive diffidence of these sectarians towards 
every stranger. At last I was introduced, by a common 
friend, to a Sabbatarian teacher, a fisherman by trade. He 
was, I was told on good authority, the most obstinate and 
most learned of all the congregation. His very meagre face, 
furrowed by the wrinkles which always denote a passion 
for thinking; his sunken but glittering, fiery eyes; a long 
lean neck ; lips twitching from impatience ; the hurry to 
pour out in a moment what can only be told in time ; final- 
ly, the habit of tracing figures in the air with his fingers 
while speaking — a habit which I have often noticed among 
our peasant philosophers — all showed me at once that I was 
in the presence of one of those fanatics who govern sects 
and inspire heresies. He knew the Scriptures, especially 
the Old Testament, almost by heart. He was well read in 
ecclesiastical history, and poured out names and dates from 
memory after the manner of a ' crack ' pupil before a board 
of examiners." 

In his religious views this honored friend was a strict 
Unitarian. He recognized in Jesus Christ a great prophet, 
a man inspired by God, as Isaiah and others had been. He 
believed in his miracles, and even in his resurrection, but 
emphatically rejected the dogma of his divinity. 

He saw no proof of the Trinity of God either in the Old 
or in the New Testament. There God is everywhere rep- 
resented as being One; Jesus Christ is His prophet, who 
calls himself, and is called by the apostles, a man. The 
Holy Ghost means God's grace and wisdom bestowed upon 
man, and not the third person of the Trinity. He explained 



326 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTEY. 

that the Sabbatarians accepted the whole of the New Tes- 
tament as inspired, but as they saw in Jesus Christ only 
one of the prophets, they gave no precedence to those books 
over the old ones. They therefore consider the Mosaic laws 
to be as binding nowadays as they were to the contempora- 
ries of Jesus. They keep Saturday as their day of prayer; 
they eat nothing that is prohibited by Moses ; they reject, 
as offensive to the dignity of God, all material representa- 
tions of divinity. Many are circumcised ; Kostomarov's 
friend was of the number, and he had circumcised his sons. 
He held that his coreligionists ought to offer sacrifices ac- 
cording to the ancient law. "The modern Jews do not 
offer sacrifices," he said, "because they are in exile; but 
we, who are the new Israel — we ought to offer sacrifices." 

Of the Jewish law he recognized only the written one. 
The posterior superstructure of Judaism was exceedingly 
distasteful to him. He called the Talmud " a collection of 
foolish ravings." He expected the coming of the Messiah 
because the promise of the Prophets was as yet unful- 
filled, as Jesus was not a Messiah but only a great prophet. 
He called it a gross superstition on the part of modern 
Jews to believe in a Messiah — King and Conqueror. He 
tried to prove that the promised dominion of Israel must 
be understood in a spiritual sense, as signifying the reign of 
truth and reason, and not as the establishing of a great 
political power. According to him the promised Messiah 
will be a great philosopher and moral teacher, who will dis- 
cover to mankind the greatest truths, and will scatter the 
Mosaic creed all over the world, and thus establish the reign 
of universal happiness on earth. 

His views as to the future life, and God's providence towards 
mankind, presented a sort of compromise between the teach- 
ings of the Old and of the New Testaments. He believed in 
a future life beyond the tomb, on the authority of the New 
Testament, though he found no word about it in the Old ; 



KATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 327 

but he rejected the doctrine of hell. He believed that God 
will in the future life forgive all infidels and sinners, whom 
He chastises for their transgressions here on earth just as He 
did in the old Biblical times. Wars, pestilences, famines, 
and fire, and all the tribulations of this earthly existence, 
are but punishments inflicted by God for the people's un- 
belief. After the coming of the Messiah He will spread 
the true faith all over the world, and peace and happiness 
will reign forever. 

The rites and worship of the Sabbatarians of Russia 
proper contain nothing Jewish. On Saturdays they assem- 
ble in their houses of prayer, where their elders or teachers 
deliver a sermon, which is interrupted from time to time by 
the sacred songs of the congregation. The Sabbatarians 
hold these meetings in great secrecy, and also, as a rule, 
conceal their aflSliation to the sect. The criminal code, 
which still punishes conversion to Judaism with deportation 
and hard labor, and the easily aroused aversion of the sur- 
rounding Christian peasantry, are sufficient grounds for 
this. A lady friend of mine, a Socialist, who lived among 
the Molokane peasantry for the sake of propagandism, was 
once invited by her hostess, a Sabbatarian, to one of their 
secret meetings, when a famous wandering preacher of the 
sect was expected to speak. She was instructed not to 
speak to anybody, and not to answer any questions. On 
entering the house they had to give a pass- word. 

As to the service, it was very unlike that of the Russian 
Jews. The small congregation was seated in rows on wood- 
en benches on one side of the room. Opposite there was 
an open space, on which stood the preacher, in silent prayer, 
clad in a sort of black mantle, with an open Bible before him. 
When all were assembled and the doors shut, he delivered 
a prayer animated by the broad Deistic spirit of the Jews, 
and then began to address the audience. He spoke about 
God, the soul, penitence, and salvation in the same Unita- 



328 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

rian spirit, appealing with great power to the emotions of 
his hearers. After a very pathetic allocution he fell to the 
ground, as if overwhelmed by the vehemence of his feelings. 
Then he rose and intoned a hymn, which was taken up by 
the congregation, and then resumed his preaching. 

Among the non- Sabbatarian Molokane the service is 
more simple, being stripped of anything theatrical or showy. 
It merely consists in readings from the Bible, interrupted 
now and again by some pious observation or comment from 
the reader. There is neither a peculiar dress nor perma- 
nency attached to the ofBce of reader. There arc gener- 
ally in each congregation some five or six people who are 
tacitly admitted to be the most versed in the Scriptures, 
and one of these takes the chair and reads indiscriminately. 
At intervals, and at the beginning and conclusion of the 
service, a choir sings psalms. The tunes are various, and 
generally very pleasing — something between the regular 
church music and the melodies of our national songs. It 
is a pity-Jthat our collectors of popular songs have paid no 
attention to the religious melodies of some of our non-con- 
formists. 

The Sabbatarian colony in the Caucasus, where they were 
deported in Nicolas I.'s time, have developed into a sect 
much more nearly allied to Judaism than that of their Rus- 
sian coreligionists. They accept the Talmud, and they ex- 
pect the Messiah in the guise of a king and conqueror, who 
is to appear at the close of the seven thousandth year, dat- 
ing from the creation of the world (Mosaic style). They 
follow the Jewish ritual in the marriage ceremony and the 
burial service, and permit divorce ; and they use the Jewish 
prayers in a Russian translation. 

Amonor the Caucasian Sabbatarians we meet with another 
curious subdivision of the sect — the so-called Herrs, who 
are as completely Judaized as is possible to any of their na- 
tionality. They elect a born Jew as rabbi, and they pray 



RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 329 

in the Jewish language, which they try to learn. The num- 
ber of these Russian moujiks who strive for the sake of 
their creed to become Jews is small — about one thousand — 
one-fifth of the whole body of Sabbatarians. None of the 
branches of this sect give any sign of great vitality. They 
do not increase, and they have no influence on the popular 
religious movements among the masses. They are shunned, 
and in their turn shun the people. Nevertheless, as one of 
our theological curiosities, they must not be ignored. 

The Molokane proper present, on the contrary, a sect 
which above all is distinguished by its spirit of proselytism. 

" It would be difficult for me " — we return to the remi- 
niscences of our celebrated historian — " to foro;et two men 
to whom I owe most of my information about the doctrine 
of the Molokane. One of them, with whom we became 
fast friends, a worthy man, formerly a member of the sect, 
has long since passed over to the orthodox Church. The 
priest of his parish considers him to be the most zealous 
and virtuous member of the congregation. There was, 
however, a time when he was looked upon as being most 
learned and dangerous among the propagandists of the 
Molokane heresy. Scores of people were won over by him 
from the orthodox Church. It was rumored that in those 
days none could resist his intellectual power. It sufficed 
that he should have one or two hours' talk with a man ; 
then if his interlocutor were not so obstinate as to remain 
deaf to his arguments, notwithstanding his own inner con- 
viction, the heresiarch was sure to convert him. There was 
in him a power of logic, accompanied by a sort of irresisti- 
ble personal fascination, which predisposed the interlocu- 
tors in his favor. He knew a lot of texts, and applied them 
with great ability, putting insoluble questions to his oppo- 
nent, confounding him, and deducing from his opinions 
contradictions and absurdities. 

" His greatest exploit as a dialectician was about the year 



330 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

1820, in the reign of Alexander L, before the Emperor gave 
free play to the spirit of reaction. The Molokane were in 
the enjoyment of comparative toleration, and the bureau- 
cracy had not as yet extended its attentions to the region 
of the Volga, which still remained a vast wilderness. 

" With the accession of Nicolas I. began the era of per- 
secution. The Saratov Molokane preserve bitter recollec- 
tions of these hard times up to the present day. There 
was among them a certain Isaeff, a zealous and obstinate 
preacher. Some honest priests had, in the kindness of their 
hearts, tried to persuade him to give up his errors, but in 
vain. Isaeif was so skilful a dialectician that he confounded 
and routed the priests themselves. After several * correc- 
tional' punishments he was indicted before the criminal 
court and condemned to the knout. He expired on the 
scaffold under the blows of this instrument, which was ap- 
plied to his back with particular ferocity, because the obsti- 
nate heretic refused to make any recantation. 

" Then the priest declared that the devil had taken the 
soul from the body of the heretic just knouted to death, 
and had placed it in the living body of a certain Trofim, 
who thus becoming possessed of two souls, his own and 
Isaeff's, began to preach with twice the ardor of the de- 
ceased. The propagandism of Trofim was soon brought to 
a close, however, and his voice silenced by the knout, like 
that of his predecessor. 

" It was at this time that my friend passed over to the 
orthodox Church. Having been the foremost in deeds, he 
had reason to expect that he would also be the foremost in 
punishment. But he assured me that his change of faith 
was the result of conviction, ascribing his conversion to the 
reading of the Fathers of the Church, such as St. John 
Chrysostom." 

ThQ other Molokane leader mentioned by N. Kostomarov, 
a man of a younger generation, fairly illustrates the changes 



RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 331 

wrought by modern thouglit upon the best elements of our 
rural classes, both non-conformists and orthodox. A stanch 
and inflexible adherent of his creed, he had endured for it 
several years of arbitrary imprisonment. Purely theologi- 
cal questions did not, however, absorb his awakening intel- 
ligence, and he strove for something higher. ** He was a 
man of surpassing natural intelligence," says our historian. 
" He had picked up some knowledge here and there out of 
the few books he could obtain, and felt deeply the necessity 
of a broader education. The fact that his coreligionists 
were deprived of any means of substantial education, and 
were thus compelled to limit their reading to the Scriptures, 
afflicted him sorely. He showed a lively interest in modern 
secular literature, and in the many questions, both social 
and political, discussed therein. He was, in a word, a man 
who excited in me a mixed feeling of respect and sorrow. 
Great is the number of people, endowed with such high 
gifts, who perish nowadays among our rural population un- 
der the weight of circumstances." 

The Molokane call themselves Spiritual Christians, a title 
very appropriate to their doctrines ; but they do not object 
to be called Molokane, which simply means milk -eaters. 
This was originally a nickname given to them by the ortho- 
dox commonalty, because they keep no fasts and use milk 
freely on fast-days. By twisting an expression of 'St. Paul's 
about the " milk " of Christian love, they made the name 
square with their views. 

The Molokane are strict Christians, and even orthodox as 
regards the fundamental theological dogmas. They accept 
in their entirety the Christian conceptions of God, the Trin- 
ity, the Incarnation, the human soul, and the life beyond 
the grave. They do not trouble themselves with theoso- 
phy and cosmogony, as their elder brothers the Dukhoborzy 
do. Their doctrine commended itself to the people by its 
perfect sobriety, and absence of any tendency to mysti- 



332 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

cism. They do not recognize " inspiration," or the " inner 
word," as of supreme authority in matters pertaining to 
faith, accepting the Bible as the only base of their religion. 
They, however, distinguish two things in the Scriptures — 
the letter and the spirit, or sense. They completely neg- 
lect the former, accepting the sense, or meaning of the 
Scriptures, as they understand it, for guidance. Thus they 
reject all external signs of worship, from the ikons and 
mass down to the sign of the cross. They reject likewise 
all the sacraments. Baptism and Eucharist included, as un- 
necessary, though they fully recognize that the first of these 
sacraments was performed by the Apostles, and the second 
by Jesus Christ. They believe that these outward signs 
were meant only as a means for the better singling out of 
the early Christians from the heathen population by which 
they were surrounded. Now that Christianity has become 
an inherited creed, professed by entire nations, there is no 
need for these outward distinctions. 

" The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life," quote the 
Molokane. Baptism in itself is inefficient; it cannot aid 
in the salvation of the soul, because it can neither prevent 
the baptized from doing that which is evil nor screen him 
from the punishment he will thereby merit. A man christ- 
ened in childhood may remain in total darkness as to God's 
commandments; he may yet live as a heathen, and has 
therefore no right to bear the name of Christian ; whereas 
if a man has not been plunged in the baptismal font, but 
yet believes in Christ, and fulfils all his commandments, is 
it possible that he shall be damned ? On sending his Apos- 
tles to preach the Gospel to the world, Jesus Christ com- 
manded them, " Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, bap- 
tizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and 
of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things 
whatsoever I have commanded you." The Molokane con- 
clude from this that by Baptism is meant the purification 



RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 333 

and renewing of man by the teachings of Christ. They 
quote many passages from Scripture in which the word 
" water " is used metaphorically, in the sense of " doctrine;" 
for instance, in the prophecy that " living waters shall go 
out from Jerusalem." If, say the Molokane, immersion in 
water is essential to salvation, because thus runs the letter 
of the Scriptures, why should we not take the word " fire " 
in the same literal sense and burn ourselves, as some Ras- 
colniks do ? 

The Molokane argue in a similar spirit to account for 
their rejection of the Eucharist. The sacrament is to be 
accepted in a spiritual sense, representing, through a thor- 
ough impregnation on the part of the believer with the 
doctrines of the Gospels, so close a communion with Christ 
as to make him one with Christ in blood and body, and 
able to destroy, in himself, any sinful impulses. 

This kind of communion alone is efficacious as a means 
to salvation, whereas those who eat of the holy wafer and 
drink of the consecrated wine in church are not in the least 
improved thereby, and continue to sin as before ; nor are 
they preserved from condign punishment. 

As regards marriage, which the orthodox Church con- 
siders to be a sacrament, they say : Are the unchristian life 
and mutual offences between a husband and wife sanctified 
by their having been wedded in a church? Mutual love 
and confidence, that it is which makes marriage sacred, not 
the rite. God created men and women, and established a 
law that they should. unite. If they have chosen each other, 
and mutual love is kindled in their hearts, it means that 
God has singled them out for each other and blessed them, 
to love each other and to live in friendship and peace, and 
not to separate. If there is no longer union and confidence 
between them, it is better that they should part company. 

Marriage among the Molokane is based exclusively on 
the wishes of the young people. The parents have no right 



334 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

to interfere, beyond the point to which the children should 
be inclined to allow them to go. They have no power to 
force their will, even by refusing them material assistance 
towards setting up a new house. The rair would interpose, 
and compel the fathers to give their share of property to 
the young people. 

The ceremony of marriage is reduced to a public decla- 
ration by the contracting parties. The elder reads some 
appropriate passage from the Scriptures — the account of 
Tobias's marriage, for instance — delivers a short address, 
and invokes the blessing of God upon the young couple. 

Divorce is permitted by the Molokane, though practically 
hardly known among them. The well-established habit of 
mutual deference between the sexes helps to preserve the 
union, when once contracted, more effectually than any ca- 
nonical prescription could do. 

We will not here expend more time on the further expo- 
sition of other details of the Molokane's creed. 

The former examples suffice to illustrate the peculiar bent 
of their doctrines. In their striving after the sense and 
spirit of the Scriptures, they may be accepted as a protest 
on the part of the popular mind against the extreme formal- 
ism of the State Church. Yet, as far as the dogmatic part 
of their doctrine is concerned, the Molokane keep with- 
in the bounds of Protestantism. They disagree with the 
Protestants in some of their conclusions, but adhere to the 
same method: they hinge all their opinions on the docu- 
mentary evidence of the Scriptures; they compare one 
text with another ; they comment on the Scriptures by the 
lights borrowed from the Scriptures. 

But the Molokane apply their usual principle of separat- 
ing the kernel from the husk to the historical part of the 
Scriptures, which puts them on a somewhat different footing. 
In all the Gospels and in the Bible they seek after the spir- 
itual sense and the moral idea conveyed by the narrative. 



RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 335 

" There are parts of the Scriptures," they say — " the par- 
ables — which are plainly given to us as stories which never 
happened in reality, but are intended to convey certain 
moral or religious lessons. Suppose that the whole of the 
Gospel is only a parable, which by God's providence was 
written for our edification, men can use it for their salva- 
tion all the same." The Molokane do not really deny the 
historical side of the Gospel. They only think that a man 
might doubt the historical value of all or some part of the 
Scriptures, and yet need not thereby necessarily cease to be a 
Christian, the Scriptures, according to them, being intended 
as a source of moral perfection for humanity. This perfec- 
tion can be attained by any man who has assimilated the high 
doctrines contained in the Gospels, and lives according to 
them, but not by a mere belief in the reality of the events 
described therein. Whether these events happened exactly 
as they are represented in the Scriptures; or whether, 
owing to the great lapse of time, they have reached us in 
a modified form — this is, according to the Molokane, a 
question of history, not of religion. The Gospel remains 
a divine revelation, whatever be the solution of the contro- 
versy. 

Leaving the question of the theological significance of 
these views alone, it is easy to see that the Molokane have 
remained throughout faithful to the national spirit of our 
people. Moved by the same intellectual need of a reasoned- 
out and freely chosen religion which inspired the Protes- 
tants of the West, they drew from the Bible and developed 
with great consistency their fundamental doctrine of salva- 
tion by good works as opposed to the doctrine of salvation 
by faith held by the individualistic West. 

The modern sects, which shall be described in the follow- 
ing chapter, exhibit exactly the same tendency. Though 
they have sprung up quite independently of Molokane in- 
fluence, they stand to the latter in the same relation as the 



336 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

Molokane stand to the Diikhoborzy ; they have simplified 
their theology ia order to render their ethics more compre- 
hensive and accessible to the mind of the people. That is 
why they have obtained such an unprecedented success. 

In the first quarter of this century we see among the 
Molokane some interesting attempts to carry the Christian 
ideals of social life and organization to their full length. 
In 1820 a remarkable man, Maxim Akenfievitch Popoff, a 
peasant of the province of Samara, began to preach the 
communism of the early Christians to his fellow-Molokane. 
After several years of untiring effort he succeeded in bring- 
ing all his fellow-villagers over to his views. They accepted 
his plan of social reform and organization. Private prop- 
erty was abolished altogether ; all the money they possessed 
was brought to the common bank, and the herds of cattle 
declared to be the common property of the whole village. 
Field labor and most of the household labor were performed 
in common. The commune elected special oflicials, mem- 
bers of seven denominations, as judges, a cashier, a teacher, 
and several directors, both male and female, to superintend 
the various branches of work. Together they formed an 
administrative council which decided upon every question. 

The example of Nicolaevka produced a great effect among 
all the surrounding villages. Some of them, Yablonovka 
and Tiagloe-Ozero, for instance, joined in a body, and intro- 
duced the organization proposed by Popoff. In others, his 
followers were active in propagating his doctrines. 

At this juncture, however, Popoff was arrested and exiled 
to Transcaucasia. For several years he had to suffer many 
hardships there, but after a time succeeded in winning an- 
other village over to his views, and organized a new com- 
munistic association on the same plan. He was rearrested, 
and this time exiled to Siberia. 

The communistic experiments started by him held their 
ground for some time, but the communes gradually returned, 



RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 337 

one after another, to the old methods, and re-established the 
ordinary system of land tenure and private property. The 
Transcaucasian followers of Popoff, forming several villages, 
containing five hundred and forty-five families in all, have 
preserved from their ancient communistic organization only 
the following form of mutual assistance : They give every 
tenth ruble and every tenth sack of corn they harvest to 
charity. The task of distributing this is superintended by 
a judge and a cashier. 

About twenty years later, in the middle of the present 
century, another Molokane teacher, Lukian SokolofiP, made 
a second attempt in the direction of Christian communism, 
but without any marked success. 

This was more than the people could put up with, and, 
after the religious excitement had subsided, they declined 
to try it. The bulk of the Molokane do not go beyond the 
social and economical principles common to all Russian 
peasants. 

Constant meditation on matters pertaining to religion, in 
the broad and rational spirit of their creed, and the diligent 
and intelligent study of the Bible, have, in the course of 
two or three generations, made the Molokane the most in- 
tellectually developed body among the whole of our rural 
population. Then, too, the Molokane are always much 
better off than their orthodox brethren — all sectarians are, 
the "rational" as well as the perfectly irrational ones. The 
community of religious interests has developed among all 
of them a spirit of cohesion and mutual assistance which 
makes them proof against external pressure, especially when 
isolated and persecuted, as the Molokane were up to quite 
recent times. Though based on the same principle, the 
communal life of the Molokane is infinitely superior to that 
of the common orthodox. If we want to see what a gen- 
uine Russian mir can be, when composed of intelligent and 
well-to-do peasants, we must go among the Molokane. 
22 



338 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

As regards the Imperial Government, the Molokane are 
not so straightforward as the Dukhoborzy. They do not 
deny it altogether, adopting St. Paul's teaching in matters 
of civil authority, but they do not consider implicit alle- 
giance to be a Christian duty. They resist, though passive- 
ly, all orders contrary to their convictions ; they do not take 
oaths, either before the tribunals nor when enrolled into the 
army, and they do not fight. The Government has been 
compelled to put up with these insuperable aversions. The 
Molokane and the Dukhoborzy arc enrolled without being 
sworn, and are told off to non-fighting departments of the 
army. 



MODERN SECTARIANISM. 



CHAPTER L 



In passing from the rationalistic sects of old standing to 
the modern ones we shall have to deal with a series of de- 
nominations of very recent date. The most conspicuous of 
these, the Stunda, is only seventeen years old. The fa- 
mous Sutaev founded his sect about the year 1877. The 
oldest, the Shalaput, assumed its present rationalistic char- 
acter about the year 1860. Other sects of the same class 
date their existence from yesterday. 

Only one of these sects has been studied in a thoroughly- 
satisfactory manner. Of many we know little but the name. 
Yet what we do know about modern sectarianism is suffi- 
cient to show that we are in the presence, not of a few new 
sects alone, but of a new and important phase in the relig- 
ious history of our people. 

First of all, one peculiarity of the present religious move- 
ment must be noted. It was started among the Southern 
Russians (Ruthenians), known in the past for their unswerv- 
ing orthodoxy and indifference to sectarianism. It spread 
thence chiefly among the orthodox population of Great 
Russian descent, among whom sects of exactly the same 
character have been spontaneously formed. The new sects 
invade the Rascol, making converts at its expense. 

Formerly the lead in any religious movement was invaria- 
bly taken by the Rascol, the religious elements animating 



340 THE EUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

the orthodox population being too feeble, both numerically 
and intellectually, to form independent nuclei. Religious 
people passed over to the various sects of the Rascol, swell- 
ing that huge body of from twelve to fifteen millions of 
people, contributing thus, by the infusion of new elements, 
to keep it brisk and healthy. 

The Molokane and Dukhoborzy were the only sects which 
grew on their own ground, independently of the Rascol. 
But these sects only attracted the picked men from among 
the orthodox masses. They spread steadily but slowly. In 
the hundred years covering their historical existence they 
hardly mustered more than half a million of adherents. 
The modern sects, on the contrary, spread with the rapidity 
which is characteristic of genuine popular movements. By 
1878, according to Yousoff, these new sects, after some ten 
or twelve years of existence, had won over more, or at least 
as many, adherents as the Molokane and Dukhoborzy had 
done in a century. 

The Russian Government is very unwilling to advertise 
its weaknesses. We have, therefore, no oflScial figures as 
to the progress of modern sectarianism during the last 
decade ; but the special council of bishops, held under the 
presidency of Pobedonoszev himself (September, 1884, at 
Kieff), the repeated circulars of the Holy Synod, enjoining 
the clergy to boldly fight the spread of popular Protestant- 
ism — all prove that the movement has not slackened. 

In a recent telegram from the St. Petersburg correspond- 
ent of a morning paper we are told that the Stunda is sup- 
posed, by well-informed persons, to be several millions strong 
in the south of Russia.* 

No religious movement in Russia has shown half the 
same power of contagion. The great Rascol of the seven- 
teenth century, if the reader remembers, mustered, after 

* Daily News, November 24, IBS'?. 



MODERN SECTAKIANISM. 341 

the first twenty-five years of its existence, a mere hand- 
ful of people — nothing when compared with these new 
sects. 

This movement is so sprightly and fresh, so full of young 
reformatory zeal, that it is not easy to determine its precise 
formulation ; but its novelty affords us, on the other hand, 
a precious opportunity for the immediate observation of the 
very process of its creation, and for feeling the very palpi- 
tation of the popular heart, which seeks in religion a solace 
for its pains and the satisfaction of its yearnings. 

The sect which is the most carefully studied, and which 
is in many respects the most characteristic, is that of the 
Stunda, or Evangelicals, as they prefer to call themselves. 
None afford a better insight into the inner motives and im- 
pulses at work within the new sectarian movement. The 
Stunda being at the same time the most numerous and the 
most pushing, these observations are of the greatest general 
interest. 

The Stunda was founded under the direct influence of 
the German Protestants settled in Southern Russia. The 
sect still preserves the traces of its origin in the name given 
to it. The word Stunda, according to Znachko Yavorski, 
is derived from Stunde, or " the hours," as the church- 
service was called among the Germans of the same per- 
suasion in the German colony of Rorbach. 

The founder of the sect, Michael Ratushny, a peasant of 
the neighboring village of Osnova, w^orked there as a wage 
laborer for several summers. He was invited by his em- 
ployer, a German Stundist, to take part in their services. 
They talked about religious matters, the Stundist advocat- 
ing the superiority of Protestantism over orthodoxy. Ra- 
tushny was much impressed by what he saw and heard. On 
returning home for the winter he talked the matter over 
with his fellow-villagers. He had no intention as yet of 
founding a new sect, as he afterwards explained at his first 



342 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

trial. Everything happened quite naturally and unexpect- 
edly to himself. 

** One day," he said, *' at a village meeting the people be- 
gan to discuss spiritual matters, and the priest who was 
present could not explain anything to the people's satisfac- 
tion. Thereupon I felt within myself a burning desire to 
understand God's words with my own mind, and to explain 
them to others. There were many people desirous of hear- 
ing me, and I went on teaching the Gospel, as I understood 
it myself, to all of them." 

Thus was the first nucleus of the Stunda gradually formed 
at Osnova during the years 1864-66. 

There was no spirit of proselytism among the German 
Protestants, who had lived side by side with the Russians 
for a hundred years without making any converts. Neither 
did any of them pass over to the Russians to preach among 
them now ; but Ratushny and several of the early Stundists 
repeatedly visited the Germans of Rorbach. It was natural 
that they should wish for more detailed instructions from 
those who had been the first to awaken within them a new 
religious life. It is certain that the German Stundists con- 
tributed much towards giving definite shape and formula- 
tion to the creed of their early Russian brethren, though at 
the trials the latter wisely kept silence on the matter, so as 
not to get their German friends into trouble. 

The early Stunda fully accepted the Protestant catechism, 
the Protestant sacraments, and the ritual of the service. The 
simplicity of the Presbyterian service, so well suited to the 
tastes of our people, has been preserved up to the present 
time, but in other respects the Russian Stunda very soon 
underwent a modification. It rejected the two Protestant 
sacraments. One branch of the sect — the old Stunda — pre- 
served them as simple rites ; the other branch — the young 
Stunda — rejected them altogether, abolishing likewise the 
dignity of the elder brother, or elected Presbyter. They 



MODERN SECTARIANISM. 343 

adopted the same mode of service as we have seen among; 
the Molokane. 

As regards the higher theological dogmas, the Stunda do 
not seem to differ in any way from orthodox Christians. 
It is not quite clear whether they push the freedom of inter- 
pretation and the spiritualization of the Scriptures to the 
same point as the Molokane do. The sect is still in the state 
of being formed, and its doctrinal side is not yet definite- 
ly settled. The Stundists show, however, a marked ten- 
dency to simplify the speculative part of their doctrine by 
accepting the views of the orthodox Christians, such as they 
are. 

Still, the real difference between the Molokane and the 
Stundists — the first representing ancient, the second mod- 
ern, popular Protestantism — consists in their general phys- 
iognomy rather than in any particular tenets. The Stund- 
ists are the Protestants of the New Testament. The Mo- 
lokane are the Protestants of the Bible. Both sects of 
course accept the whole of the Scriptures, but the Stunda 
makes little use of the Old Testament. 

"To the Gospels the Stundists look for general principles 
— for examples of Christian virtues, and for the whole code 
of individual morality. In the Epistles and Acts they see 
the legislative part of the New Testament, embodying the 
principles on which Christian communities ought to be 
based." * 

The most erudite Stundists read the Bible, and will make 
an occasional quotation from it, but they consider the New 
Testament as quite sufficient for the edification of a Chris- 
tian. All the important points of their doctrine are based 
upon the New Testament, while the Molokane use the Old 
and the New Testaments indiscriminately. Thus, for exam- 
ple, the Molokane reject the orthodox fasts, which consist 

* Slovo, 1880. 



344 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

in abstinence from certain kinds of food on prescribed days 
and at certain seasons, while they admit the old Jewish 
method of fasting, i.e., total abstinence from food and 
drink, leaving every Christian free to choose the time and 
the duration of his self-imposed mortification of the flesh. 
The Stundists, however, consider that fasts are abolished al- 
together, like the whole of the Jewish law. They declare 
the practice to be one of the many inventions of the priests, 
intended the better to secure their dominion over their peo- 
ple. They deny that the words of Christ, "The spirit is 
willing, but the flesh is weak," justify the practice of fast- 
ing, but, on the contrary, interpret it in just the opposite 
sense : " Since the flesh is weak," they say, " it must not be 
further weakened by insufficient nourishment." In contro- 
versies with the orthodox, they are fond of likening the body 
to an ox, and the soul to its driver, and they ask triumph- 
antly, " When is your ox likely to work the best — when it 
is kept in good condition or when it is underfed ?" 

The Molokane are fully penetrated with the high pre- 
cepts of Christian love and charity ; but, with a fellow- 
feeling with the thrifty patriarchs of biblical times, they 
consider the accumulation of worldly goods, and the " mul- 
tiplication of herds and of slaves," as a special sign of God's 
grace, and in nowise objectionable in a true Christian. 

The Stundists do not preach community of goods, but 
with them the levelling tendencies of the Gospel, unalloyed 
by the traditions of Jewish customs and class distinctions, 
appear more prominent and pure and binding. All this 
makes them simpler, fresher, and more popular in their social 
conceptions. 

This difference, combined with the ardor of a first ex- 
plosion, which the Molokane spent in an earlier struggle, 
carried on in more ungrateful times, has caused the Stunda 
to spread like wildfire, while the Molokane have moved very 
slowly. 



MODERN SECTARIANISM. 345 

The new sect has spread, indeed, rather by contagion than 
by active propagandism. 

As soon as the neighboring villages learned that the Os- 
nova people had gone over to the Stiinda they followed 
their example. Congregations were formed in the villages 
of Rastopol, Ignatovka, etc., in the same Odessa district. 
The Stunda next appeared in the neighboring town of Nico- 
laev, and in the village of Zlynka in the Elisavetgrad dis- 
trict — all in the same province of Kherson. 

Three years had not elapsed before the sect had spread 
over the provinces of Ekaterinoslav, Kharkof, and Poltava, 
and then leaped over the boundaries into Tchernigov, Mogi- 
lev, and Kieff. In 1877 it appeared in St. Petersburg, and 
then in Moscow. 

Such extraordinary rapidity in the propagation of the 
new creed is the most conclusive proof of the spontaneity 
of the movement, all the more so that neither Ratushny nor 
any of his early followers showed any particular talent as 
propagandists. The ground was evidently well prepared be- 
forehand.^ 

In the literature of the Stunda there is one precious doc- 
ument, which throws much light on the spiritual conditions 
of the South Russian people, who form the bulk of the 
members of the new sect. It is " The Autobiography of a 
Southern Stundist," from the pen of a former serf, who in 
the thirty-seventh year of his age came across the Stunda 
and immediately became one of its converts. 

The account of his conversion occupies only a few of the 
concluding pages of his story. The bulk of it relates, in a 
naive, unconcerned way, the history of a life of almost un- 
interrupted suffering. It reveals to us a delicate moral nat- 
ure, eminently sensitive to right and wrong, struggling from 
childhood under the blows of brutal selfishness, wickedness, 
and cruelty. There is no bile in his heart. He does not 
rebel, though sometimes he disobeys ; but in the innermost 



346 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

depths of his soul he never submits. He never overlooks 
injustice done to others or inflicted on himself. Against 
such trespasses his heart protests keenly and passionately, 
and when overwhelmed with pain and disgust and despair 
there arises within it a vehement appeal to God, the pro- 
tector of the distressed. 

We see before us a man with the intensely religious tem- 
perament so common among the peasants of all branches of 
the Russian race, whose notions associated with the name 
of religion are, however, exceedingly limited. Of the faith 
to which he belonged by birth he knew only some parts of 
a prayer his mother had taught him. He tells us how, 
on one occasion, he remembered the priest had one day 
said in his sermon, "Pray to God and the saints in heaven." 
*' These words came to my mind when I was taking the 
horses into the steppes to graze, and I said to myself, ' I wish 
I knew how to become a godly man.' This thought labored 
within me for a long time. How glad should I be to take 
counsel of somebody who is wise in such matters ! would it 
not be well to ask father when he comes home? But no,, 
father won't be able to explain such things to me ; he him- 
self is a great sinner. And so I went on, looking after the 
herd and ruminating within myself, * What shall I do to be- 
come a godly man ?' I pondered over the question for sev- 
eral months. 

"And there were three hillocks* on this steppe. One 
day I, with my drove of horses, reached the biggest of these 
hillocks, which stood in the middle. The drove began to 
graze, the colts in the middle, and the mares keeping watch 
over their little ones, as they usually do. I left them alone, 
and climbed the hillock by myself. When I reached the 
top of it I saw a cavity of such depth that when I de- 

* Mohilas in the original — small artificial bills, supposed to be re- • 
mains from pagan times. 



MODERN SECTARIANISM. 347 

scended into its centre I could not be seen from any part. 
* What a fool I was !' said I to myself. * I have lived hero 
for such a long time, and yet did not know that there were 
cavities on the tops of the hillocks.' I kneeled down and 
began to pray. That is the way to become a godly man, 
thought I. 

" I prayed there for many days. When I had climbed 
to the top of the hillock I felt as if I was nearer to God. 
But then there came over me doubts about my prayer. * Is 
it the right one V I asked myself. ' Mother taught it me, 
so it is probably the right one.' And I began to think; 
that mother was better than father, because she took no 
drink, and worked harder than father, that she was never idle 
at home, and always tried to earn something out-of-doors 
wherewith to feod her children, and that father spent all 
his earnings in drink. Then I remembered that people had 
said to me that if you pray to God for yourself alone your 
prayer will not be heard, but that if you want to be heard 
you must pray for somebody else besides. And I said to 
myself, * I will not pray for father, because he drinks, but I 
will pray for my mother and brothers.' And so I did. 
And I resolved to pray on each hillock in turn — one day 
on the first, the next on the second, the third on the last. 
Thus I prayed for three years, as long as father was em- 
ployed on the estate of Mr. D and I had to take the 

drove of horses to the steppe." 

Later on he had another religious fit, produced by acci- 
dentally hearing an Acathistus* in honor of the Virgin 
Mary and Jesus. For five years he prayed, repeating the 
few disjointed sentences from these hymns which his mem- 
ory retained. He rose by night and wept and prayed in 

* A hymn in honor of the Virgin Mary, used in the Greek Church 
in memory of the deUverance of Constantinople from the barbarians 
in the seventh century ; so called because those who sing it do not sit 
down. 



348 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

his almost inarticulate way with such fervor and intensity 
that at one time he feared his brain would give way. 

What was he asking for in these ardent supplications? 
He was not clear himself. lie wanted to become a godly 
man, which to him meant to live a pure, moral life dedi- 
cated to spiritual works, and undefiled by that which he 
saw around him. 

He was told that at Kieff there was a monastery in which 
men led such a life. He ran away from his master and 
went thither. But what he saw and learned of the life and 
morals of the monks disgusted him so exceedingly that he 
escaped from the monastery on the third day and returned 
to his master, to be flogged for disobedience rather than 
live in such a place. 

When, at the mature age of thirty-seven, he met a Stund- 
ist, who, after a few explanatory remarks, put into his hands 
a copy of the Gospel for the first time in his life, it was a 
revelation to him, and his conversion to the new creed was 
at once assured. In the society of his new friends, and in 
the doctrines which they taught him, he found the solution 
of the doubts of his life and the fulfilment of the ideals 
which he had always cherished in the innermost depths of 
his soul. 

The " Southern Stundist " belongs to the rank and file. 
Neither by his intelligence nor by his energy of thought 
can he be placed above the average. He was exceptionally 
unfortunate in the circumstances of his life, being the son 
of a homeless, hunted-down, fugitive serf, and therefore ex- 
ceptionally ardent in his search after a refuge and consola- 
tion. There is, however, no lack of suffering in any of the 
walks of Eussian peasant life, and many are bolder and 
more active in the search after truth than was the " South- 
ern Stundist." 

There were several trials of the early Stundists, at which 
the accused made a candid deposition as to their creed and 



MODERN SECTARIANISM. 349 

the causes of their conversion. The only new factor in the 
accounts of these wholesale conversions — which is pointed 
out with greater clearness by all these declarations — is the 
incapacity of the clergy of the orthodox Church to satisfy 
the spiritual needs of the people; while in our story the 
clergy are merely conspicuous by the absence of any trace 
of their existence. For the rest, all of the sectarians who 
pass before us are shown to have been moved to join these 
sects by the same inner discontent and unrest at the sight 
of the wrong-doings which surround them. With most of 
them conversion was effected in the same simple and easy 
way as with the " Southern Stundist " — that is, by the read- 
ing or hearing of the Gospel, with little, if any, additional 
effort on the part of the propagandist. 

The founder of the Stunda, Michael Eatushny, on his 
second trial explained, with modesty and unmistakable good 
faith, how wrong were those who accused him of having 
propagated the Stunda all over the province of Kherson. 

" I had not the time to do it," he said ; " but when the 
police came from the town to arrest me, and assembled the 
people, the priest came also, and when the people talked to 
him on scriptural matters he could prove nothing from the 
Scriptures, and then it was that the people began to doubt 
whether he was well versed in the Scriptures himself. 
When I was cast into prison, all knew that I was locked 
up because I had read the Gospel. They wondered exceed- 
ingly, and all who could read procured the Gospel and be- 
gan to read it for themselves. . . . Now the Scriptures can 
enlighten everybody and show them the way to salvation. 
When I was locked up for the second time people won- 
dered again, and began to search after the Gospel with 
greater zeal, and to read it. That is how our doctrines 
have spread, and not, as some people think, through my 
having propagated it." 

At the trial of the Riazan Stundists in September, 1880, 



350 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

the Stundist Drosdov spofee about bis spiritual experiences 
as follows : 

"I once stood in the church, and my soul was heavy 
within me, and I groaned in ray heart, when suddenly a 
kind of unutterable exaltation came upon me. Then I w^ent 
to the priest and said to him, 'Speak to me, father, and 
explain to me, for kindness' sake, everything according to 
the Scriptures.' He only abused me : * Go away from me,' 
he said, * you heretic !' " 

At the first Odessa trial the Stundist Lopata said that 
nobody had urged him to embrace the Stunda. "I once 
heard a small boy read from the Gospel, and I then felt 
that one must forsake evil behavior and lead a righteous 
life." He had many times heard the Gospel read in the 
church, but as the reading had not been distinct, he had 
been able to understand nothing. 

At Khotiatino, near Kieff, a peasant woman had heard 
a vague account from some one as to in what the doctrine 
of the Stunda consisted. She had, however, already read 
the Gospels, and was so struck by the truth of the new 
creed that she immediately accepted it and put it into prac- 
tice. She threw all her ikons out of window, and began 
to preach that God must be worshipped in spirit and in 
good actions, and that men should live like brothers, and 
divide all they possessed among one another. 

Thus the Stunda spreads, the spontaneous sympathy of 
the hearers doing far more than any skill on the part of 
the propagandists — a trait common to all popular religions. 

In conclusion, we will quote the words of an orthodox 
clergyman, a recognized authority on the matter, w^ho gives 
in the Cher son Diocesan Messenger the following opinion 
as to the mode and the causes of the rapid propagation of 
the Stunda : 

" A closer study of the history of the propagation of the 
Stunda has led me to the conclusion that its foundation 



MODERN SECTARIA^NISM. 351 

and strength are to be sought in the spread of popular edu- 
cation among the people. There are among the Stundists 
illiterate people, but the bulk of the sectarians can read. 
When a common orthodox peasant goes over to the Stunda 
the first thing done is to teach him to read. Then they 
give him a copy of the New Testament, in which all the 
texts considered by them to be the most important are 
marked, and duly explained to the neophyte, after which 
he is definitely accepted as a member of their congrega- 
tion. There exist illiterate Stundists who know whole 
chapters of the New Testament by heart, and all the most 
important of its texts, with the indication of the chapters 
and verses. 

" Education is to a Stundist the chief means by which 
to win respect and authority in his congregation, and also 
the best vehicle for the propagation of the heresy. A Stund- 
ist well read in the Scriptures, and knowing to a nicety 
the doctrine of his sect, enters the house of some acquaint- 
ance maybe — or not rarely, that of a perfect stranger — -and 
begins to read from the Gospel. A discussion is the natu- 
ral result. The propagandist declares that he walked in 
darkness, but that now he has seen the light; that the or- 
thodox faith is not the true faith taught by Christ; that 
the priesthood, for the sake of lucre, has invented a lot of 
ceremonies and rites ; that instead of the workings of God, 
in spirit and in truth, they have introduced idolatry (ikons 
and saints), and concealed the true Gospel from the people. 
Then the propagandist goes on to analyze the separate dog- 
mas of the orthodox creed, proving their fallacy by quota- 
tions from the Scriptures, adding that they, the Stundists, 
have been much persecuted for their creed, and are perse- 
cuted still, but having once seen the light of the true creed 
they would rather die than return to darkness. 

** The visit is repeated, and the thing invariably ends in 
the conversion of a part of the audience to the Stunda." 



352 THE EXJSSIAN PEASANTEY. 

The New Testament was a rare book in our villages un- 
til quite recent times. The Greek Church permits laymen 
to read the Scriptures, and, in principle, encourages the trans- 
lation of the Bible into the native tongues. Old Slavonic, 
into which the Scriptures were translated when Christianity 
was first tauo;ht to the Balkan Slavs, is not a foreifjn Ian- 
guage to Russians. It is the root of both branches of the 
living Russian language ; of Great Russian, which is the 
literary and official Russian, as well as of Ukrainian, or 
Southern Russian. 

There are, moreover, no popular dialects in our country. 
The fourteen millions of Ukrainians, settled in the plains 
of south-west Russia, all speak exactly the same language. 
The fifty millions of Great Russian peasants, from the 
shores of the Baltic to those of the Pacific, speak, with but 
slight provincialisms, pure, unsophisticated Russian — the 
language in which Tolstoi writes his simpler stories and 
Lermontoff wrote the gem of his poems. To a Russian 
peasant Old Slavonic is no more difficult to learn than to 
an average educated Russian. If he were to set himself to 
read the Slavonic Bible, by the time he reached the middle 
of the book, if not sooner, he would, without the assistance 
of any teacher, have mastered the language completely. The 
Rascolniks, for example, find no difficulty in reading the 
Scriptures in the ancient version. This is not so, however, 
with the common orthodox peasantry. 

A translation of the Scriptures into modern Russian was, 
therefore, very essential to them. Yet it is a fact very 
characteristic of our clergy that for centuries they never 
thought of making it. It was thanks to the untiring efforts 
of the three English clergymen, Paterson, Pinkerton, and 
Henderson, founders and promoters of the St. Petersburg 
branch of the London Bible Society, that the Russian ver- 
sion of the New Testament was published. Instituted in 
1812, this branch society only succeeded in issuing a par- 



MODERN SECTARIANISM. 353 

allel Russian and Slavonic Gospel in 1818, and a separate 
Russian version of the complete New Testament only in 
1824, by which time it had already published one in forty- 
one dialects of various savage and semi-savage tribes living 
on the outskirts of Russia. 

Two years later, in April, 1826, the Russian branch of 
the Bible Society was suppressed by the Emperor Nicolas. 
The then Minister of Public Instruction, Admiral Shishkoff, 
and the arch-abbot, Totius, denounced the Bible Society as 
"a revolutionary association," intended for the overthrow of 
thrones and churches, of law, order, and religion through- 
out the world, with a view to establishing a universal re- 
public* 

As to the Russian branch of the said society, the minister 
reported that "a most careful investigation of all the actions 
of this body shows clearly and unmistakably that, in trans- 
lating the Scriptures from the language of the Church into 
that of novels and of the stage, the Russian Bible Society's 
sole objects were to shake the foundations of religion, to 
spread unbelief among the faithful, and to kindle civil war 
and foster rebellion in Russia." f 

The Society was suppressed, its property confiscated, and 
the printed sheets of the Old Testament then in progress 
(reaching down to the Book of Ruth) put under lock and 
key. The work was not resumed until forty years later, in 
the second half of the next reign. 

The New Testament was not, however, withdrawn from 
circulation, and new reprints were issued by the Synod. In 
the reign of Alexander II. the Bible Society was partially 
resuscitated, under the more modest name of " Society for 
the Encouragement of Moral and Religious Reading." It 

* *' The Russian Bible Society,'' by the well-known Pypin, in the 
Vestnik Europy^ 1868, vol. vi., p. 264, sqq, 
\ Idem. 
23 



354 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

had its committee in St. Petersburg and its affiliated branches 
in the provinces, and was composed of both clergy and lay- 
men. But this society, with all its branches, was in its 
turn suppressed by the Emperor Alexander IIL, April 24, 
1884. The Synod and the clergy in office cannot tolerate 
the idea that any other than the regular village pops, who 
are under their absolute control, should interfere in what 
they consider their exclusive business. 

The progress of popular education — for it is progressing 
unmistakably and rapidly, in the teeth of the Ministry of 
Public Instruction, which does everything to hinder it — 
this progress has achieved more than any amount of effort 
from the outside could have done. The awakening of the 
popular intelligence has created a spontaneous demand for 
spiritual food. Up to the present time religion has been 
the chief means of satisfying this new demand, and hence 
the enormous popularity of the Russian version of the Gos- 
pels. The book is as eagerly sought after by the Rascolniks 
as by the orthodox. As early as 1824, when the super- 
stitious estrangement of the Rascolniks from anything con- 
nected with the Niconians was at its height, a Moscow 
agent of the St. Petersburg Bible Society reported that 
" most of the copies of the New Testament in the Russian 
version (then just issued) had been purchased by the Ras- 
colniks, who read this salutary book, in their native tongue, 
with great attention." 

It must be added, however, that the Stundists, who in 
the first ten or twelve years of their existence, at least, were 
almost exclusively Ukrainians, are peremptorily denied this 
satisfaction. They use the Great Russian version of the 
Gospels, the Church and the Government strictly prohibit- 
ing the Ukrainian version of any part of the Scriptures; and 
there is little chance of the revocation of this interdict, the 
religious question in this case being complicated by the po- 
litical one. 



CHAPTER II. 

While the Stunda spread from the south and south-west 
northward, another sect, which is now an entirely rational- 
istic one, the Shalaput, gained a firm footing to the south- 
east. It also spread towards the north, keeping chiefly to 
the more eastern districts. 

This sect has not as yet been so well studied as the Stunda, 
though it is comparatively an old one. From what we know 
about it, the Shalaput sect appears to be somewhat clum- 
sier and drier than its Ruthenian protagonist, but it offers 
the same distinctive characteristics of modern rationalistic 
dissent. It is a New Testament sect above all. It places 
the ethical and social side of Christianity in the foreground 
as much as the Stunda does, and it has put these doctrines 
more thoroughly and skilfully into practice than the Stunda 
has, owing partly to the greater associativeness of the Great 
Russians, who form its chief contingent, partly to its longer 
existence. 

The Shalaput embraced religious rationalism some ten or 
fifteen years before the Stunda was founded. The circum- 
stances of their conversion offer an additional illustration of 
the spontaneity and strength of rationalistic tendencies 
among the whole of the peasantry of modern Russia. 

The Shalaput sect did not start as a rationalistic one. 
Its founder, Abbacum Kopylov, an orthodox peasant of the 
province of Tambov, who died in prison in 1840, is said to 
have wandered for many years among the various sects, in 
search of the true faith. Judging by the Shalaput doctrine 
as first preached by Kopylov in 1820-30, the sects which 



356 THE EUSSIAN PEASANTEY. 

impressed him as being the nearest to heaven must have 
belonged to some milder variety of the popular mystics, i.e., 
Chlists. The Shalaput maintained its mystical character 
during the leadership of Kopylov's son Philip, while it at 
the same time extended considerably to the Russian south- 
east. From the middle of the present century, however, 
a strong revulsion in the Shalaput doctrine shows itself. 
Three teachers, among them a woman named Hania, began 
to preach in favor of a practical, informal creed, based on 
the ethics of the Gospel, and strongly opposed to the for- 
mer contemplative mysticism. 

In one generation the reformers succeeded in forming a 
curious sect, which hold their exterior forms of worship and 
their fundamental dogmas of ethics in common, while pre- 
senting considerable divergences in matters of speculative 
doctrine. 

The main body of the Shalaput has gone over to genu- 
ine rationalism. It is in that capacity that they compete 
with the Stunda. But there are sections of the Shalaput 
who lean to the theosophy of the Dukhoborzy, or to the 
strange cosmical and historical generalizations of the Ne- 
moliaki, or to the reformed Wanderers, or to some other 
rationalistic branch of the Rascol. In the Caucasus, the 
land of exile, whither all extreme sects have been huddled 
together, these divergences sometimes appear within the 
same congregation. 

" In many congregations of the Caucasian Shalaput," says 
Abramov, the historian of this sect, " the members differ 
widely on many religious questions. Yet the complete uni- 
formity of their social and ethical views keeps them together 
as a strong organic whole." 

This is not indifference towards religion. The Shalaput 
heads and the Shalaput speeches are as crammed with texts, 
and their hearts are as strongly moved by the Gospel, as 
need be ; only they leave points of theology to individual 



MODERN SECTAEIANISM. 357 

taste as ** irrelevant," putting up with all sorts of views. 
The form of worship — had there been any disagreement 
about it — would have offered more chance of endangering 
their unity ; but the extreme simplicity of their service, the 
absence of a priesthood, and the suppression of the formal- 
ity of the sacraments, is acceptable, pleasing, and convenient 
to all alike. 

The ethics of the Gospel is the part they single out and 
exalt as the supreme religious truth. The earnest religious 
zeal of the sect seems to be spent entirely in this direction. 
As far as we know, the Shalaput is the only one of all our 
sects in which there exist, in working order, some practical 
examples of Christian communism. Abramov knows of 
four such communistic associations in the Northern Cau- 
casus. One of them which he has visited consists of forty 
households grouped together in five groups, one at each of 
the five ends of a large orthodox village. Each "end" 
forms a kind of big family. The fences between the houses 
have been removed, thus throwing open to all the houses 
an entrance into a vast common court. Clothes and house- 
hold utensils are the only things which every family keeps 
to itself ; all the rest is common property. The five ends 
together form but one communistic association as regards 
both production and consumption. The field work is exe- 
cuted in common, according to a plan previously agreed 
upon by all. The produce is divided into four parts : one 
part is distributed between the families according to the 
number of eaters, i.e», their respective needs, independently 
of the amount of labor they can put at the service of the 
commune. Two parts of the produce are kept for seed 
and for cases of emergency. The last quarter is taken to 
market. The money received is divided in the same com- 
munistic spirit between the five groups, according to their 
respective needs for the current year. One portion of it is 
sent to the reserve fund of the Shalaput of the province ; 



358 THE EUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

another is forwarded to the central fund of the whole Shala- 
put federation, which has its seat in the province of Tambov. 

The ordinary Shalaput congregations, which have noth- 
ing exceptional in their economical arrangements, have all 
some provision for the common good, quite irrespective of 
ordinary beneficence. Most members regularly contribute 
the " tithe '' of all their earnings to the special fund intend- 
ed for the relief of the needy. This is a heavy tax for a 
Russian moujik, whose resources are so limited. Yet the 
sacred tithe is paid, though there is no police to force it 
upon anybody. 

Some of the Shalaput congregations, moreover, impose 
upon themselves a good deal of gratuitous work for the 
benefit of the destitute, which they perform in the same 
spirit of religious discipline. ** Whoso labors, prays," is 
their favorite saying. 

A life of labor is, according to the Shalaput, the surest 
path to salvation, and they always have a lot of texts ready 
to prove this. To live by the work of others is, on the 
other hand, considered as a particularly heavy sin. " I 
knew," says Abramov, " a rich peasant of the province of 
Stavropol, a regular koulak, who held whole villages in 
bondage. Having married a young girl who was a leading 
Shalaputka, he turned Shalaput himself, and, by way of ex- 
piation for his former sins, opened his granary and his 
house and his purse to all who wanted to receive some- 
thing from him. In half a year he became as poor a la- 
borer as the rest." 

The sect of the Shalaputs exists in eleven provinces of 
south-eastern and central Russia. It is constantly on the 
increase, mostly at the expense of orthodoxy, though it is 
very successful with the Rascol likewise. 

In the province of Stavropol, and in the region of Terek, 
they form from five to fifteen per cent, of the whole popu- 
lation. 



MODERN SECTARIANISM. 359 

The Shalaputs are united into a sort of federation. The 
elected elders, or " readers," of each congregation, perform- 
ing the simple functions of ministers, are likewise invested 
with a sort of administrative authority. Once a year or so 
the elders of the congregations meet in some town — gener- 
ally at "fair" time, and hold — in secret, as a matter of 
course — the so-called " Councils of the fathers," to discuss 
and settle questions of general interest. It is said that the 
Shalaputs have a kind of postal service of their own, not 
trusting to the discretion of the general post-office. Special 
" travellers " periodically visit all the congregations of the 
provinces, and transmit all messages of any importance to 
their destinations. To avoid detection they sometimes use 
a cipher alphabet. The key to it was found out in 1875 
by an orthodox pop, who communicated his discovery to 
the police. It was of such a rudimentary character as to 
prove it to be of their own invention. 

These signs of the existence of a compact organization 
must not be regarded as anything unusual or extraordinary. 
It is simply a proof that the Shalaputs are an old sect, 
which underwent a certain intellectual transformation while 
preserving its outward cohesion. All Russian sects of long 
standing find means of developing into a kind of loose fed- 
eration. The Wanderers have done this. The Priestless 
and Priestly have done it in a better form even than that 
described above. 

The Stundists, who are still in their infancy as a sect, 
have also taken the first steps towards the formation of a 
future organization ; they now and then hold local councils, 
and have a common fund, intended for the support of those 
brethren who have suffered for the creed, and also for the 
equipment and support of the propagandists who undertake 
the mission of "preaching the Gospel to the idolaters," 
which means the orthodox. 

There is one curious thing among the Shalaputs which is 



360 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

worth mentioning. Some sections of this sect still hold 
strange views on the relations of the sexes. There are 
Shalaputs who preach the doctrine of complete abstinence ; 
one must live, they say, with a wife as with a sister. Others 
temporize in favor of comparative abstinence, at the same 
time admitting a certain gradation in the sinfulness of mat- 
rimonial life. The less objectionable form, in their opinion, 
is that which is based on strong spiritual attraction. The 
Shalaput of this persuasion chooses accordingly among the 
women of his congregation a " confessor " — his wife being 
of course at liberty to do the same in her turn. Thus, out- 
side the legitimate families, others — illegitimate — grow up, 
the legitimate ones not being dissolved. With the views 
held by our peasants as to property, which are fully in- 
dorsed by the sectarians, a man and wife who have worked 
side by side for a long time have become joint partners in 
everything they have earned together. The legitimate fam- 
ilies are therefore preserved as an economical union, but 
the husband maintains and rears the children of his illegiti- 
mate wife, while his own are maintained and reared in the 
family of his " confessor." 

All these peculiarities are evidently the last remains of 
the old Chlists, to which the Shalaputs formerly belonged. 
Driven from the domain of speculative doctrine, it has lin- 
gered longest in the common institutions of every-day life. 



CHAPTER III. 

<* 

Besides the two large rationalistic sects, a number of 
smaller ones of the same type are reported as being founded 
here and there, almost every week, showing an exuberance 
of religious feeling which nowadays generally finds vent 
within the rationalistic bodies. Here we will describe only 
one of them, which is interesting both on its own account 
and as a fair sample of the majority. 

In 1870, in consequence of a denunciation by the local 
priest, a peasant of the province of Novgorod, named Vasily 
Sutaev, was indicted before a magistrate under the charge 
of having refused to christen his grandson. At the interro- 
gation Sutaev answered that he had refused to christen his 
grandson because it is said in the Scriptures, ** Eepent, and 
be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ 
for the remission of sins," and the child could not repent 
his sins. The tribunal acquitted Sutaev. 

The next year, 1877, the same priest lodged a new denun- 
ciation against the man, accusing him and his handful of 
followers of being " socialists who recognize no authorities." 
This caused the sect and its founder to be for the first time 
brought before the public. 

A well-known investigator of our non-conformist bodies, 
A. Prugavin, paid a visit to the social reformer of Sheve- 
levo, and published a very interesting paper about the new 
sect and its founder in one of our periodicals. 

Of late the name of Sutaev has acquired considerable 
notoriety, owing to his great intimacy with Count L. Tol- 
stoi', the novelist, who has also recently joined the sectarians. 



362 THE RUSSIAN P^IASANTRY. 

In relating the story of his inner struggles he says that the 
man who helped him most to issue victoriously from out of 
the net of contradictions and falsehoods, and to form his 
present creed, was Sutaev. 

Such a testimonial from the author of " War and Peace" 
makes it doubly interesting to follow the development of 
the religious idea in him. ** 

Sutaev gave definite shape to his doctrine when he was 
about fifty years of age. His creed was the summing up 
of a life's experiences. Born before the Emancipation, he 
came of age and married at twenty, when serfdom was at 
an end. The first use he made of the comparative inde- 
pendence of married life was to learn to read. He mas- 
tered this, to grown-up people, rather difficult art, and went 
to St. Petersburg to work as a stone-cutter at a monumen- 
tal mason's shop. After some ten or twelve years of work 
he succeeded in scraping a small capital together, and 
started in a shop of his own. His business prospered. In 
time he got some leisure, which he and his eldest boy, who 
served as shop assistant, were fond of spending in " salu- 
tary " reading. Their favorite book was, of course, the 
Gospel. They were very much impressed by the constant 
contradiction of practical life, their own included, to the 
teachings of the Scriptures. Their profession gave them 
many twinges of conscience. The son, Dmitri, was partic- 
ularly sensitive about it. 

"We are sinning, father," he repeated. "There is a 
good deal of sin in commerce. We must give it up." 

The father tried to persuade him to let the matter rest 
for a short time, only for one year; but the young man 
could not stand it, and, leaving the shop, engaged himself 
as manual laborer somewhere else. Both the son and the 
father, faithful to their peasant origin, considered commerce 
to be not "work," but " usury." 

A year later Sutaev closed his shop, as he had promised. 



MODERN SECTARIANISM. 363 

The fifteen hundred rubles which represented all he had 
made in commerce he distributed among the poor, and tore 
the bills he held on some one else to pieces. 

He returned to his village, and resumed the agricultural 
work, in which there was no sin ; but sin w^as all around him. 
"I saw that there was no love among the people. All ran 
after money, and I began to reason with myself as to where- 
fore it should be thus. Why this thing? why that? I 
spoke to clever people, and applied to the pop." 

The pop's explanations did not satisfy Sutaev in the least; 
so he began to think for himself, and gradually relinquished 
the rites and observances of the orthodox Church. First 
he left off wearing the cross on his breast, as the orthodox 
are wont to do. 

" I felt it was sheer hypocrisy," he explained to his friend 
and biographer. " We wear Christ's cross on our breasts, 
but in our lives we do not care about Christ, and do noth- 
ing for the sake of His truth." 

A child was born in his family. People wondered why 
he did not christen it. 

" Wherefore ?" he asked. " We are all of us christened, 
and yet continue to live worse lives than the infidels." 

He did not christen the child at all. Once, when on the 
occasion of a great festival the priest came to his house, Su- 
taev put him in the place of honor, and asked him to ex- 
plain to him something about the rite of christening. 

" What do you want of me, you blackguard ?" said the 
pop. " Do you wish me to christen you with this stick ?" 

Sutaev began to argue his point, but the pop made short 
work of his arguments. 

** If I had only known what you would turn out, I should 
have drowned you in the baptismal font !" 

He called him names, and said to Sutaev that he was the 
devil. 

When the pop had become a little more composed, Su- 



364 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

taev took up a copy of the Gospel, and pointing to one text, 
asked him to explain it. Hereupon the pop lost his tem- 
per again, and snatching the book from Sutaev's hands, 
threw it under the table. 

After this scene Sutaev abstained from going to church 
altogether. 

Several of the members of the future sect had had some- 
what similar experiences with their spiritual fathers. 

A relative of Sutaev's, a certain Elias Ivanov, who had 
at one time kept a retail shop in the village, but who gave 
up commerce " for the sake of his soul," explained why he 
had ceased to go to confession as follows : One year he had 
not taken the sacrament for want of time. The pop, on 
meeting him, upbraided him vehemently for this negligence, 
but then agreed to put down his name in the confession 
register for the sum of twenty copecks (fivepence). 

" Well, father," asked the peasant, " have I now received 
absolution for my sins ? Does my soul run no farther risk 
of being roasted in hell ?" The pop took offence. 

" Hold your tongue !" he said, threatening with his fin- 
ger. ** I know to whom to apply to silence you." 

A third, a retired soldier, Lunev, deposed before a magis- 
trate that nobody had tried to convert him, but that when 
the pop had refused to christen his baby for less than a cer- 
tain sum, he had christened the child himself, and when 
after a time it died, he buried it himself, without applying 
to the pop. He had not gone to church since, because, he 
said, " it is not a house of prayer, but a house of plunder." 

The final secession from the Church was accomplished 
naturally and gradually. One day Sutaev and his followers 
dropped the fasts, on the authority of the well-known text, 
*' Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man ; but 
that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man." 
Another day they collected all their ikons, and carried them 
in a bundle to the house of the priest, bidding him take care 



MODERN SECTARIANISM. 365 

of these idols, for they did not want them. A couple had 
to be married : Sutaev opened the Gospel, read the chapter 
on the miracle in Cana of Galilee, delivered a short allo- 
cution, and pronounced the benediction over the young 
couple. 

On Sundays, instead of going to church, they met at Su- 
taev's house to read the Scriptures, especially the New Tes- 
tament, of which they were particularly fond. The dissent- 
ing Church was definitely constituted, and spread among the 
Shevelevo peasants, extending thence among the surround- 
ing villages. 

Inspired by a feeling of moral rebellion against the in- 
iquity and injustice prevailing among men, the new creed 
aims, above all, at improving the mutual relations of hu- 
manity. 

** What do you say about my sect ?" Sutaev said. " We 
have no sect whatever. All we want is to be true Chris- 
tians, and true Christianity is love. We believe in the Trin- 
ity, but God the Father is Love ; Jesus Christ taught the 
principles of love, and the Holy Ghost, through the apos- 
tles, taught us the same. Our doctrine is that there ought 
to be no plunder, no killing, no fighting, no usury, no com- 
merce, no money. Of what use is money, if we all live as 
brothers, and each can have all he needs from the others ?" 

Sutaev and his followers tried to give practical applica- 
tion to these principles. Their attempts were often unsuc- 
cessful, but always generous and sympathetic. Sutaev great- 
ly objected, for instance, to the universal suspicion which 
prevailed, and to the many precautions people take against 
one another, just as if all were criminals. 

One evening the following scene took place in the street 
at Shevelevo. 

" Nicolai Ivanovitch," said Sutaev to one of his fellow- 
villagers, " are you a thief ?" 

"No, thank God!'' 



366 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

He put the same question all round, and, having received 
the same answer from all, said, in his turn, 

"Neither am I a thief. Well, not one of us is a thief. 
Why, then, do we lock everything up as if we were thieves 
all round r 

He declared that as to himself, he " should take all the 
locks from off his house and stores." 

Robberies began. He did not mind. One night, some 
peasants of a neighboring village came with a car to rob his 
storehouse. They had already filled the car, and were pre- 
paring to depart, when Sutaev, awakened by the unusual 
noise, appeared before them. They felt much alarmed, but 
Sutaev entered into the storehouse, took the single remain- 
ing sack of grain on his shoulders, and threw it on to the 
car. 

" If you are in need of bread, take this also." 

The thieves departed. But the next day they returned 
ashamed, bringing back their booty. 

" We have changed our minds," they said. 

It was not easy, however, to confound all the thieves of 
the neighborhood, the vagabonds particularly. Sutaev held 
out for a long time, but finished by putting on the locks 
again. 

" When all have accepted the community of goods," he 
said, " there will be no thieves." 

The Shevelevo congregation made an unsuccessful at- 
tempt at practical communism. They agreed to follow the 
example of the early Christians, and to possess everything 
in common. All went well for a time ; but the old Adam 
broke out again in a certain soldier, Lunev, a former koulak 
and usurer, who had abandoned his practice under the in- 
fluence of the new creed. Now, Lunev was accused of hav- 
ing retained, for his private benefit, a part of the crops he 
had to deposit in the common granary. People began to 
quarrel ; therefore, to avoid further scandal, the congrega- 



MODERN SECTARIANISM. 367 

tion reverted to the ordinary system of property. They, 
however, still practise mutual assistance to a great extent, 
preferring exchange of work to any form of pecuniary 
help. 

The dogmatic side of Sutaev's doctrine is exceedingly 
plain. The only part clearly developed is the negative. 
No ikons, no saints, no relics, no fasting, no priesthood, no 
sacraments. They have a sort of christening ceremony, 
w^hich they perform themselves ; but it is not clear whether 
they consider it in the light of a sacrament or not. Proba- 
bly not. The marriage ceremony is performed by the fa- 
ther of the bride, and merely consists in the reading of some 
appropriate chapters from the Scriptures. Their views on 
the higher theological dogmas, such as the Trinity, the Re- 
demption, the Immortality of the Soul, arc not clearly de- 
termined. 

" Paradise must be made here on earth. What will be 
found there" (pointing to the skies) "I do not know. I 
have not seen the other world. This question is a hidden 
one." 

The points on which they are precise, resolute, sometimes 
passionate up to the point of martyrdom, are those con- 
cerning human ethics. One of Sutaev's sons (John), when 
the question of military service, the rock on which all spir- 
itual Christians split, came before him, refused point-blank, 
not only to take the oath, but even to touch the soldiers' 
guns or to put on the sword. '* It smells of blood," he 
said. " Christians should fight with spiritual swords only." 
After several attempts to break through his obstinacy he 
was locked up in Schusselbourg. 

Sutaev's views as to civil authorities are those common 
to all spiritual Christians : the good ones must be obeyed, 
the evil ones resisted, though passive resistance only is per- 
missible. 

The spirit of inquiry has as yet hardly touched upon 



368 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

general political questions, but even so early as 1882, whicli 
is the date of Mr. Prugavin's publication, the payment of 
taxes devoted to purposes of violence and war excited in 
Sutaev some scruples. In 1880 he refused to pay his share 
of the taxes unless the oflScial who superintended that de- 
partment would first explain to him on what his money 
would be spent. The oflScial naturally laughed in his face, 
and took out a summons against him. Part of his property 
was sold and the taxes deducted. The next year the story 
was repeated. 

Whether Sutaev has continued this practice up to the 
present time or not we do not know. 

It is easy to recognize, in most of Sutaev's views on mat- 
ters religious and social, the doctrine now preached by his 
famous disciple of Yasnaia Poliana. Count Tolstoi's doc- 
trine of passive resistance, his views on the questions of tax- 
ation, military service, tribunals, money, mutual assistance 
by direct exchange of labor, as well as the great stress he 
lays on ethical questions — all are identical with the doc- 
trines of Sutaev. Since Count Tolstoi rejects t£e dogmas 
of future life and the immortality of the soul, as well as the 
divinity of Jesus Christ, it may be permissible to infer that 
his friend has also moved in that direction. 

Possibly he was not far from these conclusions when 
Prugavin gave his account of Sutaev's views. A certain 
reticence on such delicate points as these is indispensable to 
a Russian writer. 

The so-called Sutaevzy, or followers of Sutaev, are con- 
stantly gaining ground in many villages in the province of 
Novgorod and those surrounding it. 

It is doubtful, nevertheless, whether such a sect can ever 
become a really popular one. As a man of exceptional in- 
tellectual power and boldness of thought, Sutaev has gone 
further than most of the modern sectarians. His creed has 
too muoh of the secular element in it for it to be accepted 



MODERN SECTARIANISM. 369 

by very many. But the general tendencies of his doctrine, 
as well as the spiritual and moral experiences which led him 
to found his sect, are eminently typical. There are in 
every village and hamlet, perhaps in every household, of 
rural Russia, men and women in exactly the same mood as 
Sutaev, and who are ready to follow in the same path. 
24 



CHAPTER ly. 

We should gain little by giving a longer list of modern 
sects. The examples cited show clearly the causes, the 
character, and the extent of the religious movement in Rus- 
sia which is now spreading all over the orthodox and the 
Rascol world. Its striking uniformity, spontaneity, and 
contagiousness clearly indicate in it an incipient general 
movement on the part of the masses. Being, as far as 
mere doctrine goes, very similar to the Molokane, the new 
sectarianism, as a factor of social life, corresponds with the 
Rascol of the seventeenth century. Like the Rascol, it is 
the outcome of the combined influence of social and politi- 
cal discontent, built upon the freshly awakened religious 
feelings of the people. 

Two centuries of national life have so far developed our 
people intellectually as to modify both the character of the 
modern creeds and the method pursued in order to awaken 
popular interest in them. 

The Rascolniks of the seventeenth century, their fetich- 
like devotion to forms and rites notwithstanding, were as 
truly religious and Christian as the Stundists of to-day, or 
any of the Western sects. They were fully penetrated by 
the spell of the personality of Christ, and acted under the 
direct influence of this feeling. What their Christ required 
them to do makes no psychological difference; this was 
merely a reflection of the low intellectual level of the peo- 
ple of that epoch, which evidence is further corroborated by 
the fact that at that period the chief thing which roused 
the people from their apathy was the personal example of 



MODERN SECTARIANISM. 371 

martyrdom, as has been clearly proved in those chapter^ 
which refer to the Rascol. They were like young children, 
who can understand and feel strongly and vividly only those 
things which are presented to them in a palpable form, cal- 
culated to strike their senses. 

They now no longer need material demonstration in the 
domain of religion, at all events. Persecution plays a per- 
fectly immaterial part in the rapid spread of modern secta- 
rianism. Only at the beginning did the Government try 
to apply the usual methods of criminal courts and deporta- 
tion without judgment against the new sectarianism. After 
a short experience these methods have been prudently aban- 
doned, and the sectarians have been left almost unmolested. 
The only means resorted to to awaken the religious spirit 
nowadays, as we have plainly seen, is the simple reading of 
the Gospel ; and what they read in its words now is very 
different from what their forefathers understood in times 
of yore. The masses, or, to be exact, the leading section of 
the masses, has taken, in the last two centuries, a step for- 
ward. It stands now upon the same level where, one cen- 
tury ago, stood a small minority, which furnished the con- 
tingent of our old rationalistic sects — the Molokane and the 
Dukhoborzy. 

And the minorities ? 

The minorities have nowadays stepped out of the tutelage 
of religion altogether, and are fully able to participate in 
the stream of positive scientific European thought. The 
flower of our working-men turn socialists, read John Stuart 
Mill, Spencer, and Darwin, Kostomarov and Setchenov, 
Turguenief and Ostrovsky, just as the young people of the 
privileged classes do. It is immaterial whether they turn 
freethinkers or not, though for the most part they do. All 
that is essential is, that they have dispensed with the 
crutches of religion. They are one with the whole of 
educated Europeanized Russia, upon which the future des- 



372 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

tinies, as well as the present salvation, of the country cer- 
tainly depend. For it is here that are conveyed in various 
forms and stored up the knowledge, the understanding, 
and the creative ideas evolved by the dull books of various 
denominations, which in the last resort rule the world. 

To describe this Europeanized Russia does not come 
within the limits of this study. But it is fully within our 
scope to inquire. What are the mutual relations of these 
two cultures — the strongly positive one, which radiates 
from the towns ; and the strongly religious one, harbored 
in the villages ? 

We need not enter upon generalities. It is certainly a 
fact that religion, while stimulating thought, at the same 
time hampers it by tracing for it certain impassable bar- 
riers. All, however, who come into direct contact with the 
new sects, or have studied them with attention, concur in 
the opinion that to our peasants religion has given much 
more than it has withheld. The rationalistic sectarians, as 
a body, represent the most intellectual elements of our 
rural population. They know how to read almost to a 
man, and what is more, they do read, not the Scriptures 
only, but very many other books and papers which are 
within their reach. They are open to all the influences of 
modern civilization and literature, which is still a dead let- 
ter to a large mass of the orthodox peasantry. Thus our 
rural culture is by no means hostile to the culture of the 
towns; it marches forward on the same road and to the 
same goal, following the latter at a certain distance. 

Some of the exponents of sectarianism — Prugavin and 
Abramov among them — expect that our sects will take the 
lead. They see in them popular attempts to discover and 
work out new and higher forms of social life — almost ex- 
periments of practical socialism. We do not exactly share 
this too flattering opinion. The practical attempts of 
Christian socialism, such as that of PopofiE and others, were 



MODERN SECTARIANISM. 373 

SO small and short-lived, and as a rule so wanting in origi- 
nality, that they cannot be considered as a new departure. 
The real sphere of sectarianism, in which it has succeeded 
wonderfully, is not creation, but conservation. The social 
ideals which the rationalistic sects profess and maintain 
were our mirs' ideals, pure and simple, no whit higher nor 
better, though more fully applied, protected as they are by 
the impregnable walls of religion. Sectarianism is for our 
people a means of defending what they hold dear, and not 
of developing anything new. 

This function performed by the sects in our social dy- 
namics is a very important one, and the service rendered 
by the sects to the people is very great. They will help 
to preserve and transmit to a future generation the inherit- 
ance of habits and moral ideas which are of great social 
value in themselves, and yet more so as the materials and 
starting-point of future development. 

Yet even in this more modest, though very valuable of- 
fice, the influence of modern sectarianism can hardly be 
counted upon as likely to endure for a very long period of 
time. The Rascolniks, who stood their ground for two 
hundred years, had a much easier task to perform. They 
rebelled against the iniquities of the political order; the 
institution of serfdom, the poll-tax, conscription, centraliza- 
tion of the Church, and administrative abuses. They pos- 
sessed a territory of their own, and their enemies were out- 
side of it. The modern sectarians who have rebelled 
" against the new Pharaohs who enslaved the people,'* to 
use the Stundists' phrase, have to fight a more dangerous 
enemy within their own precincts. It is doubtful whether 
they will be able to hold their own beyond a certain very 
limited extent. Religion cannot stand for long against the 
battering-rams of economical influences. It never did, 
though it has often tried, and there is no reason to suppose 
that our sectarians will form an exception to this rule. 
They will hold their own as long as they are isolated and 



374 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

few, and religious enthusiasm has not cooled down to its 
natural point. When this is over, the economical decom- 
position must needs penetrate into the sectarian mirs as it 
has penetrated into the orthodox ones. However oppor- 
tune the assistance our people receive at this critical mo- 
ment from religion, it is only a temporary one — a glass of 
strong wine, which reinvigorates an exhausted traveller for 
a time, but will not prevent his falling on the road at last, 
if in the mean time he does not receive more substantial 
nourishment; unless indeed there comes a moment when 
from a purely defensive weapon this religion changes into 
an aggressive one, stimulating the people to open rebellion, 
in one form or another, against the kingdom of Baal. 

The rationalistic sects, though so very peaceful now, are 
in reality more dangerous to the existing order of things 
than the old Rascol was. They have touched the root of 
the evil in traducing the existing institutions before the 
tribunals of reason and conscience. They are consistent 
and thorough, and they do not, from superstition, shun the 
orthodox masses. The negation of the authority of the 
Government, whether absolute, as with the Dukhoborzy, or 
conditional, as with all the rest of the rationalists, has up 
to the present time only led them to individual acts of pas- 
sive resistance. It may become a collective one in time ; 
it may change its nature altogether. Religion can express 
everything, assume any shape. The spirit of active re- 
bellion is unmistakably growing among the peasantry out- 
side the realms of sectarianism. Why should it not invade 
the sects also when their power to satisfy the actual desires 
of the people shall be exhausted ? At all events, it is im- 
possible to depend much upon the loyalty of a well-or- 
ganized body of perhaps three or four millions of people 
who, for aught we know, may become ten or twelve in a 
few years, and who all view the existing government as 
admittedly wrongful. The religious question in Russia is 
to some extent a riddle. 



THE TRAGEDY OF RUSSIAN HISTORY. 



CONCLUSIOK 

In throwing a rapid retrospective glance over all that has 
been said upon the economical, social, and intellectual life 
of our peasantry, we shall everywhere perceive the existence 
of a deeply rooted dualism. Two hostile principles are in 
a death-struggle in all the spheres of popular life — the one 
springing from the inner consciousness of the masses, the 
other forced upon them from the outside by those in power. 

This antagonism is not a peculiarity of modern times. 
The few glimpses into our past history which the Rascol 
ofiEers us prove that this antagonism was keenly resented 
by the people at least two centuries before the present era. 
As a matter of fact, it goes back to much earlier times. 
An underhand struggle between the people and the Gov- 
ernment has been going on almost ever since the establish- 
ment of autocracy in Russia — in other words, for four or 
five centuries. 

The fact that the people did not remould the State so as 
to make it fit in with their tastes is in itself a conclusive 
proof that there must have been some fatal shortcoming in 
the people themselves. Remarkably flexible in the combi- 
nation of labor, and rich in resources in the higher domain 
of thought, the Russian popular mind seems to have been 
stricken with the curse of utter sterility in the domain of 
politics. They were never able to rise above the most rudi- 



376 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTEY. 

mentary and strictly patriarchal conceptions of State and 
state-craft. 

Perhaps this was due to the overwhelming predominance 
of the agricultural classes, constitutionally patriarchal ; per- 
haps the result of the great facility offered to interior emi- 
gration, which was the easy and common wind-up to all our 
civil discontents, while in other countries people, nolens vo- 
lens, had to stay and fight out their grievances, finding by 
means of friction some mutual compromise. Perhaps we 
should attribute it to the absence on our soil of anything 
which could suggest to our people some new political form, 
such as the rich inheritance of Koman civilization suggested 
to the West. Whatever the reason, the fact is that through 
all the centuries of ancient political self-government anterior 
to the creation of the Muscovite monarchy Russia remained 
at the same embryonic stage of polity from which she 
started. 

The vast popular republics which existed up to the end 
of the fifteenth century were established in the form of big 
families. The metropolis stood in the position of father to 
the whole land, and the metropolitan crowd, when assem- 
bled in the public square, ruled over the whole of it, ad- 
vancing the same claims to unlimited confidence and obedi- 
ence as characterize all forms of paternal despotism. The 
centralized monarchy had no difficulty in overcoming these 
communities, which had made no provision to secure inner 
cohesion and unity of action. The main body of the rural 
population, and even the lower orders of the townspeople, 
accustomed to obey the patriarchal despotism of an assem- 
bly, had no difficulty in transferring their allegiance to the 
patriarchal despotism of one prince. 

The Muscovite rule disgusted the people wherever it was 
introduced; the Moscow bureaucracy, which was the real 
form under which monarchy came into contact with the 
people, proved worse than anything they had ever experi- 



THE TRAGEDY OP RUSSIAN HISTORY. 377 

enced before. But the people never regarded the short- 
comings of his agents as a reproach to the Czar. The 
worse the officials, and the more impossible the access to 
the Czar, the stronger grew the people's conviction that he 
would redress their wrongs did he only know of them. 
The perennial influence of hero-worship, combined with the 
patriarchism prevailing in the every-day life of the multi- 
tude, strengthened the legend of the Czar-Tribune and cham- 
pion of the people. The faith in him grew upon the masses 
in proportion as the person of the Czar was farther removed 
from all chance of practical usefulness to them. 

This is the fatal superstition which constitutes the trage- 
dy of our history. 

In its palmiest days autocracy represented the interests 
of the State and not those of the people. The well-being 
and the rights of the people were matters of secondary im- 
portance, when the power, the glory, the expansion of the 
State were at stake. 

Now, the force of the State, offensive and defensive, be- 
ing in the last resort represented by the force of the or- 
ganized minority, the Czar's enormous power naturally grew 
to be an instrument wherewith to squeeze from the toiling 
masses the utmost they could be made to yield for the bene- 
fit of these organized privileged minorities. No other form 
of government could have gone to the same length in im- 
posing upon the laboring classes obligatory sacrifices for the 
sake of the State. 

Up to a certain point this was done in the interests of 
the people themselves, who needed to have their nationality 
and soil protected just as much as the rest of the communi- 
ty ; but it was so difficult to keep within the limits of the 
strictly necessary, and it was so easy to overshoot the mark. 
It is doubtful whether there has been one single Czar who 
has hesitated before imposing an additional burden on the 
people, or in withdrawing another privilege, in order to in- 



378 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

crease the military or the administrative power of the State, 
no matter whether it were needed or superfluous ; and, with 
the single exception of Peter the Great, there has been nei- 
ther Czar nor Czarina who, in assessing these burdens, has 
not shown a criminal partiality for the upper classes which 
have formed their immediate surroundings. 

Thus, instead of maintaining popular rights, as they were 
expected to do, the Czars went on gradually curtailing them 
in favor of the privileged classes and of the bureaucracy. 
The process was very slow at first. Centuries after all 
traces of self-government had been destroyed in the big 
towns — seats of the sovereign vetches — the rural population 
preserved many of their ancient political privileges. The 
regional assembly of the people elected high officials, and 
could summon before them, and judge, even the landlords 
and noblemen resident in their respective districts. Up to 
the beginning of the sixteenth century these assemblies in 
some places even preserved the name of vetche. 

In like manner the distribution of the best arable and 
cultivated land to the Czar's militiamen and courtiers did 
not much offend the peasants, so long as their personal free- 
dom was not interfered with, and they could make arrange- 
ments with the new landlords as regarded rent, or remove 
elsewhere if they chose. 

The people began to fight, and to fight desperately, when 
at the end of the sixteenth century the Czars deprived them 
of their right of removal, thus laying their hands upon their 
individual freedom, and gradually putting on their necks 
the yoke of serfdom. 

For two centuries the terrible struggle lasted, but by this 
time the legend of the Czardom had obtained such a hold 
upon the people's minds that their cause was doomed be- 
forehand. The peasants withstood an evil while worship- 
ping and upholding its cause. They rebelled against the 
unbearable tyranny of their masters and of the officials, but 



THE TRAGEDY OF EUSSIAN UISTORY. 379 

their hearts fell and their hands dropped when they met an 
authoritative spokesman of the Czar. They were in the po- 
sition of the pugilist who should have to fight with a slip- 
knot round his neck, which would throttle him at any bold 
move. 

They took heart and fought their great battles only when 
they had at their head some Imperial phantom — a false 
Demetrius, or a second Demetrius of Tushino, who was the 
false false Demetrius; or the Russian Spartacus, the Cos- 
sack Emelian Ivanovitch Pugatchev, who under the name 
of Peter III. stirred to open rebellion one-half of enslaved 
Russia, and made Catherine II. tremble upon her throne 
— a unique spectacle among popular risings, made in the 
name of truth and justice, and at the same time backed by 
an impudent lie, which was an open secret to very many of 
its champions ; which strove to attain to the progressive 
ideals of freedom, equality, and social justice, and was at 
the same time a downright reaction. If successful, it would 
have merely thrown Russia back from the eighteenth into 
the fifteenth century, with the prospect of a gradual rebe- 
stowal of the privileges taken from Catherine's nobility in 
favor of Pugatchev's Cossacks and generals and their de- 
scendants. 

After the bloody suppression of Pugatchev's rising, no 
further popular insurrection of any moment ever took place. 
For one century the people bore the frightful chains of 
slavery, which the Czars supported merely to please the 
idle nobility ; for since the day when the nobility — at one 
time militiamen — had been exempted from obligatory serv- 
ice to the State (1762), serfdom had become an inexcusable 
act of tyranny, and its support by the Czars an act of 
treachery. 

Did such a flagrant, palpable treason to the popular cause 
throw a damper on the popular belief in Czars ? No, it did 
not. The people seemed to be more than ever devoted to 



380 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

them. It is astonishing how feeble both logic and reason 
are when they have to cope with imagination and certain 
other vague aspirations of the human heart. 

The patriarchism of our people once again played us a 
trick. The self-governing patriarchal institutions, entirely 
driven from the upper walks of life, and completely for- 
gotten by the people, nestled within the village communes, 
their last refuge and stronghold. Here they exhibited a 
marvellous tenacity and adaptability. As long as the eco- 
nomical equality between the members of the mir was not 
entirely broken down, the small village communes could 
realize the ideal of a patriarchal government much more 
truly than the popular republics, based on the same princi- 
ples, could. The mir is not an ideal human institution, 
destined to break the teeth of time. It is only a phase of 
development, which will certainly have to begin by first 
suppressing, or at all events restricting, its political func- 
tions. Of all forms of authority the patriarchal one is 
certainly the most insupportable to a thoroughly indepen- 
dent mind, just as paternal tutelage is to a full-grown man. 
Yet this is no argument against the usefulness of a good 
family education. 

The mir's life and the mir's authority must be looked 
upon somewhat in the same light. They were an excellent 
school, which developed many precious qualities in the bulk 
of our people which will not soon disappear. But it is to 
this same institution that we owe the enormous tenacity of 
that plague of Russia, the superstition of the Czar. 

For all primitive minds the monarchical idea has a kind 
of peculiar fascination. The balance of powers, the mutual 
checks, and the control of the various springs of a compli- 
cated political machinery are pure Hebrew to them, while 
they can grasp the idea of a good, benevolent man without 
an effort. It is difiicult for them not to take the empty offi- 
cial phraseology as to their sovereign's love and solicitude 



THE TRAGEDY OF RUSSIAN HISTORY. 381 

for their good literally. Of human temptations and weak- 
nesses they know only those sordid ones which they see in 
their own every-day life. A man who is placed so much 
above them is naturally fancied by them to be above human 
nature altogether. In the continental monarchies there has 
always been, and there still lingers, much of this supersti- 
tion within the rural classes, notwithstanding all their con- 
stitutions. This is why in Russia monarchical superstitions 
have penetrated even into those regions where they would 
seem to have no historical reason for existence : for instance, 
in the Ruthenian provinces annexed to Russia in the seven- 
teenth century, and enslaved by Catherine 11. at the end of 
the eighteenth. 

We have not come across any positive statement on the 
subject with regard to the English peasantry, but we were 
struck by an amusing scene in George Eliot's "Middle- 
march," the encounter between Mr. Brooke and his tenant 
Dagley,^upon the "Rinform" the King will send upon the 
landlord's back. It is too life-like to be invented, and it seems 
to indicate that even in England there exists something of 
the kind, or did exist at all events at that time, notwithstand- 
ing her three centuries of constitutional government. 

As for our moujiks, who in their mir had before them a 
tangible embodiment of this patriarchal idea of government, 
they performed a curious psychological operation. They 
mentally transferred to the Czar the whole of the functions 
performed by the mir, thus giving to his authority a re- 
markably precise and clear definition. The Czar's author- 
ity is the mir's authority, magnified so as to suit the re- 
quirements of the State, without being in the smallest degree 
changed in its most characteristic attributes. The Czar is 
the common father of the country, its protector, and the 
supreme dispenser of impartial justice to all, defending the 

* Harper's Library Edition, vol. i., p. 435. 



382 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

weaker members of the community from the stronger. The 
Czar, like the mir, " pities " everybody. The whole of the 
nation's riches "belong to the Czar" exactly in the same 
sense as the land and meadows and forests within the boun- 
daries of the commune belong to the mir. The most im- 
portant function the peasant's imagination imposes on the 
Czar is that of universal leveller ; not, however, of movable 
property. The Czar, like the mir, has the right to impose 
taxes on whomsoever he chooses, and on whatever he 
chooses, but he is expected not to interfere with what the 
people regard as the private property of each household, i.e., 
movable capital. On the contrary, the Czar is in duty 
bound to step in and to equitably redistribute the natural 
riches of the country, especially the land, whenever this is 
needed in the common interest. 

All these restrictions and obligations are purely moral. 
The people repose implicit confidence in the Czar's wisdom 
and justice. He is absolute master of the life and property 
of every man within his dominions, and no exception may be 
taken to his orders. The occasional blunders made by the 
Czar, however heavy they may be, must be borne with pa- 
tience, as they can be only temporary; the Czar will redress 
the evil as soon as he is better informed on the matter. 

Nobody would accuse us, I suppose, of unfairness in de- 
fending the popular legend of the autocracy, though we 
are not really sure to what extent it represents the past, 
and how far the present views of our peasantry as a body. 
Since the Emancipation many new influences have been at 
work in an opposite direction, in addition to which it must 
also be remembered that the two pillars of our patriarchism, 
the mir and the family, have changed vastly during the last 
twenty years — the mir for the worse, the family for the 
better. 

Before the Emancipation, and for from ten to fifteen 
years afterwards, these institutions were in their full vigor, 



THE TRAGEDY OF RUSSIAN HISTORY. 383 

and so was the superstitious belief in the monarchy. It 
seemed to be something immutable, and so frightfully ear- 
nest that it overwhelmed and crushed the hopes of many 
noble Russian hearts. Thus a melody, which we dismiss as 
flat and commonplace when sung by a single voice, becomes 
strikingly solemn and impressive when taken up by an enor- 
mous crowd. During the three reigns which preceded the 
present one, to oppose autocracy seemed an act of madness. 
Yet all thinking men of the day, in whom pusillanimity did 
not obscure judgment, could see that the Czars were less ca- 
pable than ever of playing the part of people's tribunes. 

A century ago, many years before any opposition was 
dreamed of in Russia, namely, after the outbreak of the 
French Revolution, autocracy lost the most essential ele- 
ment of a patriarchal government, i.e.^ full confidence in its 
own immutability. Abject fear took possession of the 
hearts of the autocrats — fear of the surging democracy that 
they were expected to champion. The Czars were no longer 
sure of their position, or even of their personal security, and 
they wanted to protect themselves by making common cause 
with the privileged classes. They ceased to be the repre- 
sentatives of the State as a whole, with no vested interests 
in any particular party. Prior to the Emancipation the Czars 
were pleased to parade their title of " first nobleman (dvori- 
anin) of Russia;^' but after the Emancipation they might 
well have assumed the name of " first broker of the Em- 
pire." 

The sentimental, liberal Alexander I., and the tory demo- 
crat Nicolas I., both so intensely worshipped by the poor 
moujiks, kept them enslaved because they feared a revolution. 
The Emperor Alexander II. had the courage to break the 
spell and to cancel this terrible injustice ; but he wanted to 
remain an autocrat at all costs, and only grew the more ob- 
stinate the more the new needs pressed upon him. He was 
inevitably driven to the fatal course of re-establishing with 



384 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTKY. 

his left hand abuses which he had overthrown with his right. 
Instead of inaugurating a new and brilliant era of progress 
for the nation, and securing a happy reign for himself, he 
merely introduced the last phase in the terrible struggle be- 
tween the people and their government. 

The enemy is now at their door. If our people at the 
present crisis lose the battle, they will never again have any- 
thing of their own to lose. With a nation of hereditary 
husbandmen, the land question is the question of life and 
death. It is silly and cruel to consider the problem as in 
any way solved by the inquiry as to whether the peasants 
themselves would or would not prefer a return to their 
former state of serfdom. Certainly they would not; but 
they would prefer yet more to be free, without the danger 
of starvation. 

They received the announcement of their liberation with 
transports of joy, but they were utterly disappointed by the 
details of the new agrarian regulations. Their secular su- 
perstition gave rise to some very curious phenomena of so- 
cial psychology. 

To begin with, they declined to believe in the authenticity 
of the Emancipation Act. To their candid, unsophisticated 
minds it seemed utterly incredible that their Czar should 
have "wronged" them so bitterly as to the land. They 
obstinately repeated that their " freedom," i.e,, the Emanci- 
pation Act, had been tampered with by the nobility, who 
had concealed the Czar's real " freedom," which had been 
quite a different thing. The most emphatic declarations 
made before the peasants' deputies and elders by the Em- 
peror's ministers and by the Emperor in person could not 
disabuse them. They persisted in believing against belief. 
There were hundreds of peasants' rebellions in all parts of 
the Empire owing to this misunderstanding, especially dur- 
ing the first years which followed the Act of Emancipation. 
They subsided at last. After ten years of incessant persua- 



THE TBAGEDY OF RUSSIAN HISTORY. 385 

sion through the raedium of speeches, utases, floggings, and 
an occasional shooting, this superstition began to give way. 
It did not disappear, however; it only changed its shape. 

Since 1870 or thereabouts we hear no more of the peas- 
ants' doubts as to the authenticity of the agrarian arrange- 
ments of 1861. They have ended by admitting that it was 
really the work of the Czar's own hands ; but the whole of 
our peasantry have made up their minds, and expect a new 
agrarian arrangement from the Czar which will rectify the 
blunders of the old regulations. Rumors as to the coming 
agrarian ravnenie, or " redistribution," which is to take place 
next spring, next summer, and so forth, now and then spread 
like wildfire over whole provinces and regions. It is not un- 
common for them to give rise to " disorderly " and illegal 
conduct, such as refusal to pay the rent due to the landlords, 
or the arbitrary appropriation of his fields by the peasants. 
The authorities of course intervene, and the Central Govern- 
ment, which ascribes all things to the Nihilist propaganda, 
makes strenuous efforts to dissipate these dangerous rumors. 

Up to the present time official and Imperial declarations 
have not opened the peasants' eyes. The moujiks see in 
them either a new trick of the nobles (landlords), or by some 
strange aberration of intellect understand the plainest state- 
ments in an exactly inverse sense to the real one. We know, 
for instance, cases where peasants' deputies expressly sum- 
moned before a governor-general to be instructed in the right 
views on the agrarian question, have, on their return to their 
villages, emphatically affirmed that " His Excellency has pos- 
itively charged them to be reassured, because the Czar will 
ere long effect an agrarian * redistribution.'" They have 
doubtless been spoken to " about the land," and then proba- 
bly the general has indulged in some vaporing about the 
Czar's solicitude and benevolence. The two things when 
put together could for them mean nothing but " agrarian 
redistribution." 
25 



386 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTEY. 

In 1878-79, after the enormous strain of the Turkish 
war, rumors relating to this supposed coming agrarian " re- 
distribution " assumed particular definiteness and enlarge- 
ment. They penetrated everywhere, and even into the ranks 
of the army; people openly discussed the coming rearrange- 
ments at the village meetings, in the presence of the rural 
authorities, who, as peasants, fully shared in the common 
expectations. 

General Makov, then Minister of the Interior, issued a cir- 
cular letter, to be publicly read in all villages, and afiixed to 
the walls in all communal houses. This circular contradicted 
these rumors, and declared positively that there would be no 
"redistribution," and that the landlords would retain their 
own property. It produced no effect. Professor Engel- 
hard t, who wrote one of his Letters from a Village at the 
time of this fit of popular hopefulness, says that the mou- 
jiks who heard Makov's circular understood it in the follow- 
ing sense : " It is requested that people shall for a time ab- 
stain from gossiping at random about the * redistribution.'"* 
As to the ministerial warnings against the evil-intentioned 
disseminators of false reports, and the orders to apprehend 
them, they produced the most amusing bewilderment. The 
superior and the inferior agents of the Administration could 
not understand each other's language. The superior oflScers, 
the gentlemen, as Engelhardt calls them, by "evil-inten- 
tioned people " meant to imply the Nihilists, the advocates 
and partisans of agrarian " redistribution ;" while according 
to the elders and other village authorities the " evil-inten- 
tioned" were those who opposed this movement. 

The year 1880, which was almost a year of famine, gave 

* When three years afterwards, in March, 1884, General Makov, 
compromised by some bribery business, committed suicide, the peas- 
ants said that he had destroyed himself because he had issued this 
famous circular without the Czar's consent, and that the Czar had just 
discovered his treachery. 



THE TRAGEDY OF RUSSIAN HISTORY. 387 

new zest to the popular expectations. " There is no bread 
in the country," they said ; " the raoujiks are so pressed 
that they cannot move on their little patches of land, and 
the landlords have no end of land lying waste." A uni- 
versal conviction grew up among the peasants that in the 
course of the next spring (1881) the Czar's surveyor would 
come and start upon the work of general readjustment. 

It must be borne in mind that, with our peasants, this 
idea of the comino* "redistribution" never assumed the 
character of expropriation of one class of men — the land- 
lords — for the benefit of another class of men — the peas- 
ants. They expected a general readjustment, a fair redi- 
vision in the exact sense of the word. All who dwelt on 
the land, the landlords included, would receive their fair 
share of the land, according to the number of their children. 
Several facts relating to this period show unmistakably that 
such was the peasants' idea as to the " redistribution." In 
some places small landlords, after being asked how many 
children they had, received the tranquillizing assurance from 
the peasants that ** they had nothing to fear, because at the 
coming redistribution they would receive an extra piece of 
land in addition to that they already held." In other dis- 
tricts the impatient peasants have been discovered in the 
fields in the act of performing some strange geodetic oper- 
ations. On being asked what it all^ meant, they answered 
that they were "cutting ofiE their landlord's share before- 
hand." 

Thus, to use the authoritative words of Professor Engel- 
hardt, "The thing (the redistribution) about which so 
much has been said is understood by the moujiks in the 
following sense : At certain periods, namely, at the time 
of taking the census, there must be a general redivision of 
land all over Russia, as there are now and then local redi- 
visions of land within the boundaries of each commune. 
The communal redivision means the equalization of the 



388 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

shares of land held by the various households. The gen- 
eral redistribution is to be the equalization of the shares of 
land held by the different communes. It is not a question 
of the expropriation of the landlords, but of the fair dis- 
tribution of the land of the whole country, whether held by 
landlords or by peasants. The rich peasants who had es- 
tates of their own, purchased *in perpetuity' (private prop- 
erty), spoke of the coming redistribution in exactly the 
same sense as the poorer peasants did. They never doubted 
but that these legally acquired estates could be taken from 
their legal owners and given to other people." 

In the eyes of the genuine moujiks these speculations in 
land are similar to mutual sale or exchange, or pawning, of 
their respective lots of land between the members of a vil- 
lage commune. They are private arrangements made at 
the personal risk and peril of the contracting parties. When 
the land division comes, the mir takes no notice of any such 
agreements, which are as a matter of course binding only up 
to the time of the redivision. 

Every moujik, whether rich or poor, proletariat or land- 
owner, mir's man or even mir-eater, provided always that 
he has not broken his ties with the peasantry, holds the 
same views as to landed estates in general. They all there- 
fore expect a universal redistribution of the land; those 
who have in the mea^ time succeeded in appropriating a 
nice piece of this most precious commodity look upon it as 
a sad but unavoidable necessity ; the destitute and landless 
as an occasion for great rejoicing ; while both wonder why 
the Czar tarries so long over giving the signal for it, to do 
which, according to the multitude, is both his right and his 
duty. 

Stripped of their monarchical trappings, these ideas pre- 
sent themselves as a very sound and thorough economical 
theory of land nationalization. The most advanced advo- 
cates of the system would have nothing to teach our peo- 



THE TRAGEDY OF RUSSIAN HISTORY* 389 

pie as to its general principles. They have from their 
childhood been educated in the soundest theories of land 
nationalization, and exclude not only the right of private 
persons to monopolize land, but also prohibit its engross- 
ment by some privileged communes to the permanent in- 
jury of others. 

The theory of land nationalization, for which an extreme 
faction of social reformers have to fight so hard in Europe, 
is with us not a subversive but a conservative doctrine. It 
exists with us as a fact of universal knowledge, an ancient 
and traditional right, which our people have never renounced 
and never forgotten, only they did not know, and for the 
most part do not even now know, how to protect it. They 
trust to an authority which, whatever the individual inten- 
tion of its representative may be, is fatally hostile to these 
rights and these institutions, and has brought them to the 
verge of a complete subversion. 

We Russians are now living in a critical, nay, almost sol- 
emn moment, when, to arrest this decay and to convert it 
into a rapid revival, no violent upheaval would be necessary. 
This moment will not last long ; imbecility is nowhere al- 
lowed to have its way free of cost, no, not even in Russia, 
but it certainly has not passed as yet. If the nation ob- 
tains control over the political powers within a measurable 
distance of time, land nationalization will be a reform as 
easy and peaceable as it is unavoidable; and that once an 
accomplished fact, there are ample grounds for expecting 
it will give to Russia a splendid start on the road of social 
progress. 

It will relieve our agrarian distress immensely. The in- 
dustry of our people and their passionate attachment to 
agriculture are a guarantee for prosperity when they shall 
have a sufficiency of land to apply their hands to. Free- 
dom of intercourse, a larger share of local self-government, 
independence of the village communes, and a better cduca- 



390 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

tion would, to say the least, certainly secure to our people 
that amount of mutual assistance won by the members of 
the Eascol and other sects through their religious organi- 
zation. There is nothing unreasonable in supposing that 
when protected by general and local freedom, a fair agrarian 
arrangement would be likely to possess considerable stabil- 
ity. Land nationalization will be a great thing for Russia, 
even if it merely takes the form of an equitable redistri- 
bution of this source of work, as our people understand it 
to be. 

But is it probable that a measure of such magnitude 
would lead to no corresponding improvements in the meth- 
ods of agricultural labor ? We do not mean small improve- 
ments in agricultural implements and modes of culture — 
things which individual peasants can do on their own plots 
of land ; these we take to be a matter of course. Every 
intelligent husbandman will do this, provided he has the 
means. The main road to any really great improvement in 
the productiveness of national labor, in agriculture as well 
as in other walks of life, lies in the combination of individ- 
ual effort, in the extension of the area under culture, and in 
the co-operation of the laborers. 

Would our peasants be equal to the demand made upon 
them in this direction ? 

Well, judging by what they now are, in all probability 
they would. 

There exist no people on the face of the earth, or, to 
keep within the boundaries of the better known, on tho 
face of Europe, who, as a body, are so well trained for col- 
lective labor as our moujiks are. Whenever a group or a 
crowd of them have some common economical interest to 
look after, or some common work to perform, they invaria- 
bly form themselves into an artel^ or kind of trades-union, 
which is a free, purely economical mir, purged of the com- 
pulsory, despotic elements of political authority. It is 



THE TRAGEDY OF EUSSIAN HISTORY. 391 

a free union of people, who combine for the mutual ad- 
vantages of co-operation in labor, or consumption, or of 
both. Its membership is voluntary, not imposed, and each 
member is free to withdraw at the close of the season, or 
upon the conclusion of the particular work for which the 
artel was formed, and to enter into a new artel. Quarrels 
between members, as well as offences against the artel, if 
not settled in an amicable manner, have to be brought be- 
fore the common tribunals ; the artel has no legal authority 
over its members. Expulsion from the artel is the only 
punishment, or rather the only protection, these associations 
possess against those who break their rules. Yet the artels 
do very well, and in permanent work often prove to be life- 
long partnerships. The fishermen of the north, the carpen- 
ters who go to work in the towns, the bricklayers and 
builders, the diggers and the freight-carriers — all the hun- 
dreds of thousands of peasants who move from the villages 
in search of work — either start by forming artels, or join 
some artel when they reach their destination. Every artel 
accepts work, makes engagements, etc., as a body, distrib- 
uting or dividing the work they have to do among them- 
selves. The principle followed is that every man's pay 
shall be strictly proportioned to the amount of his individ- 
ual labor, or that this ideal shall be approached as nearly as 
the nature of the particular industry will admit of. 

There is endless variety in the economical characters and 
the size of these artels, some being regular owners of indus- 
trial establishments or trading companies (a machine man- 
ufactory in Ural), while others are only temporary and lim- 
ited associations of vast numbers of men, blown together 
by the four winds of heaven, such as those of bargemen or 
railway servants, etc., though in substance they all repro- 
duce the leading features of the village mir. 

The principle of co-operation is applied as frequently and 
as naturally to agricultural as to non-agricultural work. Of 



392 THE EUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

late years co-operation in agriculture has become eA'en more 
varied and more extensive than ever before, partly because 
of the impoverishment of the people, and especially because 
of the wholesale breaking down, throughout Eussia, of the 
big patriarchal families. So long as they existed they 
formed compulsory co-operative associations, and were held 
together by family despotism. Now they are supplanted 
by free associations or self-electing artels. 

Thus we know that in Southern Eussia and in the south- 
west, as well as among the Kuban and Terek Cossacks, the 
great diminution in the number of cattle gave rise to co- 
operative ploughing. Several households join their cattle 
to form the team of four to six horses or oxen necessary to 
move the heavy plough used in the black earth region. 
Sometimes they do the harrowing in common, likewise. 
It is a suggestive fact that those districts where the fam- 
ilies have been most broken up are just those where this 
form of co-operation is most in vogue. In the Borzenzk dis- 
trict ninety per cent, of the householders plough their land 
in this manner. 

In the impoverished districts of the province of Moscow, 
the peasants who have no cattle at all unite in the purchase 
of horses on the joint-stock principle, keeping them and 
usino; them in turn. 

In the province of Kostroma flourishing communes in- 
vest in thrashing-machines for the common benefit, at the 
expense of the mir. 

The habit of renting plots of land of neighboring land- 
lords, by artels of five, six, or more peasants for purposes 
of tillage, is practised everywhere. The peasants join their 
capitals to pay the landlord, and join their hands to till the 
land, and divide the profits accordingly. In many places 
whole mirs rent considerable tracts of land in the same way, 
tilling it by the mir on the principles of the artels. They 
divide such work as can be done by the job, and that which 



THE TRAGEDY OF RUSSIAN HISTORY. 393 

cannot be divided they do in a body. The renting of 
meadows by mirs is a universal practice, and hewing of 
wood is always done in a body, in the same way as all 
other public work. All labor of this nature is executed 
with an almost military precision and regularity. The 
w^orliing power and the obligations of each household are 
known to a nicety, and accounts are kept in the memories 
of all and of everybody, of the whole year's budget of pub- 
lic labor. Any given quantity of the working power of a 
village can be produced at a moment's notice. 

The peasants are fully trained for combined work of 
greater dimensions— in the draining of large marshes, the 
digging of big ditches, the construction of bridges, etc., in 
which several villages may be concerned, or in the mowing 
of large meadows belonging to several, sometimes five or 
ten villages, in common. Every village sends its contingent 
of men, horses, wagons, implements, etc. They divide the 
work, and make the most complicated mental calculations, 
and keep all accounts without the use of a scrap of paper 
or a pencil, owing to the great development of their mem- 
ories, which astonishes people accustomed to the aid of a 
note-book. As a rule, all these works and operations are 
completed without any hitch or friction. Their long train- 
ing has developed in our moujiks two valuable qualities. 
These are (1) honesty in the work, which prevents a man 
from cheating the artel by supplying work of an inferior 
quality, when control is difficult ; (2) self-command, which 
teaches the member of an artel, for the sake of the general 
advantage, to bear the burden with equanimity, when it so 
chances that he has to exert himself a little more than his 
neighbors. 

Now, if our people are so much accustomed to co-opera- 
tion in general, and co-operate so frequently on a small 
scale, why should they be unable to co-operate on a larger 
one? If they unite to make a full team for a common 



394 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. 

plough, or buy a thrashing-machine out of the general funds 
of the niir, or, as an artel, till a tract of land they rent, etc., 
why should they be unable to till the whole of their com- 
munal land with improved implements on the co-operative 
system, which would be so immeasurably more profitable? 

AVhy should not they in the natural course of their intel- 
lectual and economical growth pass from communal and 
local co-operation to general national co-operation, gradually 
embracing all the branches of national industry, which is 
nothing but socialism ? 

This eventuality will probably be dismissed by most of 
our readers as a chimera. AVell, we do not think they will 
prove right. Taking into account the present economical 
ideas, the training, and the moral habits and aspirations of 
our rural classes, as well as the intellectual and moral dispo- 
sitions of their educated brethren, there is nothing chimeri- 
cal in supposing tliat, under the inspiring influence of West- 
ern social science, our economical evolution, when once 
begun, may lead to a full and comparatively rapid realiza- 
tion of socialism. Or, to put it beyond theoretical contro- 
versy, we will say that, supposing socialism is not entirely a 
dream, of all European nations the Russians, provided they 
become a free nation, have the best chance of realizing it. 
The future will decide as to how much the Russian nation 
is fitted for it. 

But whether altogether socialistic or only half-way tow- 
ards these luminous ideals of the future, Russia, to the Rus- 
sians, will be something entirely different, as a factor in 
international life, to that ignoble and disastrous one which 
she now is. A nation of laborers, she is to bring to the 
brotherhood of nations something peculiarly her own, in 
the development of new forms of labor. If she cannot do 
this, if we are to suppose that the solution of the political 
crisis under which she is now struggling will come after the 
aspirations of labor slxall have been stifled, and that Russia 



THE TRAGEDY OF RUSSIAN HISTORY. 395 

will Lave to plod on her painful way to social reorganiza- 
tion in the rear of Europe, she will be but a poor imitator, 
and a drag upon civilization for many generations to come. 
. The abstract sciences are the only things which are cos- 
mopolitan. All that deals with, or refers to, masses of living 
men may be great on condition of its being national. In 
one domain only has Russia attained to the glorious summit 
of human achievements : this is in her art ; because this was 
the only domain in which the genius of individual creators 
has been inspired and supported by the genius of the peo- 
ple ; with the result that it has produced a complete thing, 
which is as oriojinal as it is national. As it is now beino: 
rapidly incorporated as an international inheritance, it has 
certainly added its deep and powerful note to the general 
choir. 

As to her polity as a nation among nations, Russia can 
be great otherwise than by her size, if only political free- 
dom walks hand in hand with the growth of those ideals 
of labor which spring from the collective aspirations of 
her people. We are not European enough to successfully 
imitate a progress based upon the fruition of individual 
interest. 



INDEX. 



Afanasieff, Ivan, 149, 152. 
Agrarian disturbances, 110. 

question, S-'Zl, 384, sqq. 

Agricultural proletariats, 47-51. 
Aleshka, 187-189. 
Andrey Denisov, 285-287. 
Antichrist, reign of, 264, 265. 
Arcadj, Bishop, 283. 
Artel, 390-394. 
Assistance, mutual, 170-185. 
"Autobiography of a Southern 
Siundist;' 345-349. 

Balkans, land tenure in, 6. 

Banks, 15, 22, 23. 

peasant, loan and savings, 

65, 66. 
Bashkin, Matvey, 305-309. 
Bashkir, 106, 108-111. 
Batrak, 60, 153, 154, 162-164. 
Beglopopovzy, the, 271, 272, 275. 
Beguny, the, 275, 276, 278. 
Belizy, the, 289. 

Bible Society, London, 352-354. 
Bishops Cannon, Arcady, and Hen- 

nady, 283. 
" Black " clergy, 230. 
Bohylkas, 165. 
Bobyls, 165. 
Bolshak, 74. 
Bondage system, 32, 39, 48, 50- 

52, 61. 
Bosykh, Ivan, 199-205. 

Cannon, Bishop, 283. 
Capitalists, Russian, 1], 22. 
Castrati, the, 270. 
Cattle, export of, 21. 



Caucasus, administration of the, 

112-114. 
Cheremukhin, 194-196. 
Chlists, the, 269-271. 
Circulation of money, 16-18. 
Clergy, black, 230. 

indifference of, 246, 247. 

relations between, and peo- 
ple, 231-233. 
want of culture among, 243, 

244. 

white, 230. 

Coalition, TrepofP-Shouvaloff-Pota- 

pofp, 119, 120. 
Colonel Kapger, 122-127. 
Communes, village, 78, 101, 168, 

169. 
Constabulary, rural, 128-140. 
Conversions, popular, 83. 
Corn, exports of, 20-22. 
Council of Moscow, 250. 

1666-67, 250. 

Count Leo Tolstoi, 361, 368. 

Yalueff, 107. 

Credit, form of, 38-40. 

Crimea, administration of, 114, 

115. 
Czar, popular conception of the, 

381-383. 

" Dancers," the, 269. 
Danilo, 256. 

FiHpovitch, 268. 

Death-rate, 63-56, 70. 
Debt, national, 11, 12. 
'' Deniers," the, 301. 
Denisov, Audrey, 285-287. 
Dissent, rationalistic, 302-309. 



398 



INDEX. 



Disturbances, agrarian, 110. 
Dukhohorzy, the, 271, 310-322, 
340. 

number of, 324. 

persecution of, 319-322. 

*'Dumb," the, 301. 

Edinoyerzy, the, 273. 
Education, popular, 66, 67, 74, 75, 

354. 
Elders, 95-98, 100. 
Emancipation, Act of, 2, 55'^., 8, 9, 

26, 27, 45, 384. 
—. — of serfs, 93. 
Embezzlement of land, 102, 104- 

127. 
of money, 65, 66. 



Employments, non - agricultural, 

' 157-160. 
Ermolaeff, Ivan, 190, 191. 
Export of cattle, 21. 
corn, 20, 21. 

Fedoseeyzy, the, 275-278, passim. 
Fihpovitch, Danilo, 268. 
Filipovzy, the, 276, 277. 

Gagarine, Princess, 113. 
GerassimofP, 138, 139. 
Gorshkovs, the, 171-177. 

paternal, 93-140. 

Government, 2, 3, 69, 91, 93-140. 
Grain, average returns of, 61, 62. 
Gray Moujik, 167-177, 190, 191. 
*' Greedy Pop," legend of the, 221. 

Halleluiah's wife, 227, 228. 
Hard times, 141-207. 
Havrila Yolkov, 193-199. 
Hennady, Bishop, 283. 
Home policy, 67-69, passim. 
ffromadaSj the, 78. 

Ideal Christian life, attempts at, 

336. 
Ignatius of Solovezk, 257. 
Industries, in-door, 33. 
Inheritance, laws of, 79, 80. 



Insurrections, popular, 379. . 
Interest, rate of, 40, sqq.^ 44, 45. 
Ispravnik, 64, 100, 102, 129. 
Ivan Afanasieff, 149-152. 

Bosykh, 199-205. 

Ermolaeff, 190, 191. 



Izba, 142, 143. 

furniture of, 143, 

Jaroff, 86. 

Judaisers, the, 303, 304. 

" Jumpers," the, 269. 

Kabala, 32, 39, 48, 61, 306. 

Kalikovzy, the, 298. 

Kalmucks, 111. 

Kapger, Colonel, 122-127. 

Karmaly, 41. 

King's way, the, 296. 

Koulak, 34-36, 46, 47, 52, 53, 166, 

170. 
Kovylin, 278. 

Land, embezzlement of, 102, 104- 

127. 

hunger, 141, 147. 

love for the, 147, 148. 

nationalization, 382, 385- 

390. 

question, 384. 

redistribution of, 68, 69, 382, 

385-390. 

reform, 62, 63, sqq. 

tenure in Russia, 4-8, 25. 



in the Balkans, 5. 

Lastochkin, 136. 
Laws of inheritance, 79, 80. 
Legal rights of women, 80. 
Legend of the devil and the smith, 

222, 223. 
— —"Greedy Pop," 221. 
marvellous thrashing of corn, 

226, 227. 

Noah the Godlv, 222. 

St. Nicolas and'St.Elias, 224- 

226. 
Loghishino, 118, 119, 121-126. 
London Bible Society, 352-354. 



INDEX. 



399 



Makoorine, 134, 135. 
Marriage question, 292-296. 
Marvellous thrashing of corn, le- 
gend of the, 226, 227. 
Mass book, the revised, 236-238, 

248-250. 
Matvey Bashkin, 305-309. 
Maxim, A. Popoff, 336. 

the Greek, 305. 

Mediators, 99, 109. 
"Milk-eaters," 331. 
Mir, 64, 78, 82-86, 89, 90, 93-95, 

171, 380-382. 
3/ir-eaters, 34, 52. 
Alir^s men, 99. 
Missal, the revised, 236-238, 248- 

250. 
Modern sectarianism, 339-374. 
Mokhalniky, the, 301. 
Molokane, the, 310, 320, 321, 323, 

324, 329-338, 340. 
differences between Stimdisfs 

and, 343-345. 

non-Sabbatarian, 328. 

number of, 324. 

persecutions of, 319-321. 

Sabbatarian, 325-329. 

views of marriage, 333, 334. 

Money, circulation of, 16-18. 

paper, 18, 19, 22, 59. 

"Morsels," going for, 180-184. 
Mortality in Russia, 53-56, 69, 70. 
Moscow, Council of, 250. 

riots, 251-253. 

Moiijiks, 1, 72-92, 148-157, 381- 

390. 

gray, 167-177, 190-192. 

Mutual assistance, 179-185. 
Mystic sects, spread of, 268. 

National debt, 11, 12. 
"Negators," the, 299-301. 
JVemoliaki, the, 298. 
Ne-Nashy, the, 299. 
Ndovzy, the, 301. 
Nicolas Tchukhmistov, 300. 
Nicon, Patriarch, 236-238, joam/n, 
248. 



Nihilists, 70, 129. 

Nikitina, 115, 116. 

Noah the Godly, legend of, 222. 

Non - agricultural employments, 

156-160. 
Non-conformity in Russia, general 

review of, 370-374. 
" Non-prayers," the, 298. 

"Old believers," the, 271. 
Orbeliany, princess, 113. 
Orthodox Church, 89. 

Paleostrovsky, "locking up," 257, 

258. 
monks, 257. 



Paper-money, 18-20, 22, 58, 59. 
Paranka, 173-176. 
Paternal government, 93-140. 
Patriarch Nicon, 236-238, 248. 
Patriotism, Russian, 91, 92. 
Peasant loan and savings-banks, 

65, 66. 

proprietorships, 60, 61. 

rebellions of, 117-127, 384. 

State, 27, 28, 155, 156. 

- — tribunals, 78, 79. 
Peasantry, capacity for co-operat- 
ive work, 390-395. 
CO operative mutual assist^ 

ance, 178-185. 
curtailment of privileges, 

377-380. 

dissatisfaction, 71. 

dress, 143, 144. 

food, 144, 145, 161-164. 

loyalty, 70, 71. 

migration, 147, 148. 

religiousness, 208, sqq., 229, 

234, 235. 

starvation, 23. 

struggle for their own, 153- 

166. 

superstitions, 218-228. 

truthfulness, 154, 155. 

Persecutions of Molokane, 319- 

322. 
Rascolniks, 254-259, 282, 283. 



400 



INDEX. 



Fisars, 81, 96, 97. 

*' Planters,'' 99. 

Fless Wanderers, 281. 

Policy, home, 67-69, passim. 

Fomorzi', the, 276-277. 

Fop, 89, 229-232. 

the Greedy, legend of, 221. 

Popoff, Maxim A., 336, 337. 
Fopovzy, the, 271-275, 297, 298. 

bishopric, founding of, 274. 

Popular conversions, 83. 
Popular education, 66, 67, 74, 75, 

354. 

insurrections, 379. 

religion, 75, 208-235. 

PosAeMori Wanderers, 281. 
Potapoff coalition, 119, 120. 
Princess Gagarine, 113. 

Orbeliany, 113. 

Proletariats, agricultural, 48 - 50, 

77. 
Property, rights of, 80, 81. 
Public relief, 189, 190. 
Pugatchev, rising under, 262, 379. 

Railways, 12-14, 23. 
— construction of, by govern- 
ment, 11, 12. 

debt, 12. 

— — traffic, 14, 15. 

Rascol, the, 236-301. 

Fiscolniks, excommunication, 250, 

251, 273. 

peculiar culture, 294. 

persecution, 253-259, 282, 

283. 

pops, ordination of, 271, 272. 

religious debates, 289-291. 

schools, 289. 

self-government, 261. 

the, intellectual activity, 284, 

sqq, 

villages, 259, 260. 

Rate of interest, 40, sqq., 44, 45. 
Rationalistic dissent, 302-338. 
Ratushny, Michael, 341, 342, 349. 
Ravnenre, 385. 
Re-baptists, 254. 



Redistribution of land, 68, 69, 882, 
385-390. 

Relations between clergy and peo- 
ple, 231, 232. 

Religion in Russia, 75, 208-235. 

Remission of taxes, 141, 142. 

Rights of property, 80, 81. 
women, 80. 



Rising of the Strelzy, 252. 

under Pugatchev, 262, 379. 



Rural constabulary, 128-140. 
Russia, capitahsts in, 11, 22. 

conception of state-craft in, 

376, 377. 

land tenure in, 4-8, 25. 

mortality in, 53-56, 69, 70. 

non-conformity in, 370-374. 

patriotism in, 91, 92. 

religion in, 75, 208-235. 



Russian history, tragedy of, 375- 

395. 
Rvanzeff, 41. 

Sabbatarian, MoloJcane, 325-329. 
Sabbatarian, non-Molokane, 328. 
Scriptures, translation of, 352- 

354. 
Sectarianism, modern, 339-374. 
Serfdom, 6, 7, 25-27. 
Serfs, 77, 78. 

Shalaputs, the, 269, 339, 355-360. 
Communistic associations, 

357-360. 

federation, 359. 

marriage relations, 360. 



Shevelevo, congregation at, 365- 

369. 
Shopzy, the, 269, 270. 
Shouvaloff coalition, 119, 120. 
Shyshkov, Yasily, 300, 301. 
"Sighers," the, 298. 
Solovezk, Ignatius of, 257. 
Sopelky Wanderers, the, 281. 
" Southern Stundist, autobiography 

of," 345, 348, 349. 
Stanovois, the, 64, 102, 129, 130. 
Starik, 273. 
Starikovshina^ ^'lii. 



INDEX. 



401 



Starvation of peasantry, 23, 24. 
State and railways, 11-14. 
State peasants, 27, 28, 155, 156. 
St. Cassian and St. Nicolas, legend 

of, 90, sqq. 
St. Nicolas and St. Elias, legend of, 

224, 225. 
Stramiiky, the, 278. 
Strelzy^ rising of the, 252. 
Strigolniks, the, 302, 303. 
Struggle of peasantry for their 

own, 153-166. 
Siunda, the, 339-351. 

literature of, 345, sqq. 

Stundists^ differences between, and 

Molokane, 343-345. 

federation of, 359. 

Sutaev, Vasily, 361, 369, sqq. 

Sutaevzy^ the, 368. 

System, bondage, 32, 39, 40, 48, 

51, 52, 61. 

Taxes, 27-29, 58. 

■— remission of, 141. 

Tchin, 94, 100. 
Tchinovnik, 94, 96, 117. 
Tchukhmistov, Nicolas, 300. 
Theodosius the Squint-eyed, 307- 

309. 
Tokareff, trialof General, 118-126. 
Tolstoi, Count Leo, 361, 368. 
Tragedy of Russian history, 375- 

395. 
Trcpoff coalition, 119, 120. 



Trial of General Tokareff, 118- 
126. 

Uriadnik, 128-140. 
Usman, 41. 
Usurers, 34, 35. 

Valueff, Count, 107. 

Vasily, Shyshkov, 300, 301. 

Vetche, 378. 

Village communes, 78, 101, 168, 

169. 
Volkov, Havrila, 193-199. 
Volost, 78, 79, 93, 96. 
Vozdykhanzy^ the, 298. 

Wages, variation in, 30, 31. 
"Wanderers," the, 278-281. 

Pless, 281. 

Poshekhon, 281. 

" White " clergy, 230. 

Ones, 289. 

Women, education of, 287-289. 

held in honor, 288, 289. 

legal rights of, 80. 

Wygorezie^ the. 285. 
Wyg settlement, 285-288, 292- 
294. 

Yield of grain, 29. 
Yusefovitch, 106. 

Zemstvos, 65. 
Zossima, 304. 



THE END. 



BOOKS ABOUT RUSSIA, 

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NAEKA, THE NIHILIST. 

By Kathleen O'Meara. 16mo, Cloth, $1 00. 



"The scenes and incidents of Miss O'Meara's tale are purely Rns- 
Bian, and the time is the present period of which Tolstoi treats. Nat- 
urally they suggest the marvellously realistic pictures of the author of 
*Anna Kareniua,' although it would be very unjust to the younger 
novelist to compare her work with his. Tolstoi is always introspec- 
tive; he deals rather with character than with the incidents which de- 
velop character. *Narka' portrays an involved and ingenious com- 
plication of events which hold the interest of the absorbed reader until 
the end is reached. Tolstoi's stories, even when he has a story to tell, 
are simply the intuitive outgrowth of the thoughts and actions of the 
real men and women he draws. Ills dramatis personce make his plots, 
while Miss O'Meara's plots, on the other hand, make her men and 
women. . . . Narka Larik, a low-born Russian Jewess, is a peculiar 
product of Russian soil and of autocratic Russian rule. She is pos- 
sessed of a beautiful person, a glorious voice, and a strong moral and 
mental constitution ; she is suspicious, as all Muscovites are, a thor- 
ough and consistent hater, a devoted friend, truthful to a degree; and 
she calmly swears on the holy image of the blessed St. Nicholas to an 
utter falsehood in order to screen her lover and to aid his cause. . . . 
The scenes are laid among that curious mixture of Oriental magnifi- 
cence and barbaric discomfort, of lavish expenditure and shabby 
makeshift, to be found in a Russian castle, with its splendid vast- 
ness, the immensity of its grounds, the immensity of the forests on 
all sides of it, and the general scale of immensity on which everything 
about it, and within it, is invariably conducted. Add to these Rus- 
sian prisons, Paris salons^ French convents, the lyric stage at Milan, 
Socialists, Nihilists, priests, patriots, and vivisectionists, and it will 
readily be seen how strong and eflective a story can be made by a 
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study of character as Miss O'Meara has already proved herself to be. 
Narka Larik is a better woman morally than Anna Kareniua, intel- 
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nent of all that is true and womanly in modern Russian life." 



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SEBASTOPOL. 

By Count Leo TolstoI. Translated by F. D. Millet 
from the French {Scenes du Siege de Sebastopol). With 
Introduction by W. D. Howells. With Portrait. 
16nio, Cloth, 75 cents. 



In his Sebastopol sketches Tolstoi is at his best, and perhaps no 
more striking example of his manner and form can be found.— A". F. 
Tribune, 

There is much strong writing in the book ; indeed, it is strength 
itself, and there is much tenderness as well. — Boston Traveller. 

Its workmanship is superb, and morally its influence should be im- 
mense Boston Herald, 

It carries us from the shams of society to the realities of war, and 
sets before us with a graphic power and minuteness the iuner life of 
that great struggle in which Count Tolstoi took part. ... A thrilling 
tale of besieged Sebastopol. All is intensely real, intensely life-like, 
and doubly striking from its very simplicity. We have before our 
eyes war as it really is.— .y. Y, Times. 

The various incidents of the siege which he selects in order to pre- 
sent it in its different aspects form a graphic whole which can never 
be forgotten by any one who has once read it, and it must be read to 
be appreciated.— iVa^ion, N. Y. 

The descriptions, it is needless to say, are masterly. No novelist 
has ever before succeeded in thus depicting the emotions and utter- 
ances of the soldier in battle. — Beacon, Boston. 

A powerful appeal against warfare, written in that wonderful style 
which lends life and character to the most trivial incidents he describes. 
It is a fascinating book, and one of its chief merits is the introspec- 
tive art and analytical power which every page reveals. . . . This is 
the most nervous and dramatic production of Tolstoi that has been 
rendered into English.— iV. Y. Sun. 

It is, undoubtedly, the most graphic and powerful of Tolstoi's works 
that has been given to the American reading public. ... It should be 
read and pondered by Christians, philanthropists, statesmen— by every 
one who can think. — Chicago Interior. 

The profound realism of the book, its native, organic strength, will 
make it one of the great books of the day. Certainly the underlying, 
the ever-present horrors of war have seldom been so strikingly set 
forth. — SL Louis Republican. 



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